Danse Macabre
A scandal at the Bolshoi Ballet - by David Remnick
In this week’s issue of the magazine, David Remnick has an article about the recent scandal at the Bolshoi Ballet: “In the days I spent talking with dancers, instructors, and administrators at the Bolshoi, it was clear that everyone had accepted some version of this theme: ‘What happens in the theatre reflects what is happening in the streets,’” he writes. “Russians, in the contemporary version of their fatalism, see their country as a landscape of endless bespredel, lawlessness, a world devoid of order or justice or restraint.”
Continue reading: http://nyr.kr/12HWJJO
Misha Friedman, the photographer commissioned to cover this story, spent some time at the Bolshoi last month, after the acid attack on the company’s artistic director, Sergei Filin. “On one hand, everyone there was just doing their regular job,” Friedman said. “At the same time, everyone knew why all the extra media had descended on them, and I felt that it was my responsibility to capture this unspoken tension.”
Click-through to see a slideshow of Friedman’s photos at the Bolshoi: http://nyr.kr/WHS0oU
