Russian ballet master Yuri Grigorovich dies at 98
-Russian ballet maestro Yuri Grigorovich, considered one of the greatest choreographers of the 20th century, has died at the age of 98, the Bolshoi Theatre said on Monday.
Grigorovich, artistic director of the Bolshoi Ballet in Moscow from 1964-1995, was famed for productions of Spartacus, Ivan the Terrible, Romeo and Juliet and many other ballets.
Valery Gergiev, head of the Bolshoi and Mariinsky theatres, told Izvestia newspaper he was "a legendary figure who will continue to command respect and admiration for decades to come".
The Bolshoi said in a statement that it would "faithfully cherish his memory and protect his priceless legacy".
Grigorovich was born in 1927, a decade after the Bolshevik Revolution, and performed as a soloist with Leningrad's Kirov ballet before becoming a choreographer.
During his long tenure at the Bolshoi, it staged frequent international tours and enhanced its reputation as one of the world's great ballet companies. But the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union brought uncertainty, financial worries, internal rows and a flight of talent abroad.
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In 1995, Grigorovich resigned after months of conflict with management over performers' contracts, triggering the first dancers' strike at the Bolshoi in its more than 200-year history. As the lights dimmed at the start of a scheduled performance, a dancer stepped through the curtain to tell the stunned audience there would be no show that night.
Grigorovich created a new ballet company in Krasnodar, southern Russia, although he eventually returned to the Bolshoi in 2008 to work again as a choreographer and ballet master.
He won the highest Russian and Soviet awards, including People's Artist of the USSR and Hero of Socialist Labour.
The Bolshoi marked his 90th birthday in 2017 with two months of special performances.
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The face of Raj Kapoor, after all, looked touched by life—he had a moustache. These faces look touched up, air-dropped. But I also suspect this male naivete has a lot to do with how desire was shown in these later movies, whispers from Mera Naam Joker (1970) and Bobby (1973), expressing itself most egregiously in his final three films, Satyam Shivam Sundaram (1978), Prem Rog (1982), and Ram Teri Ganga Maili (1985), where women withered as suffering symbols of sexed tradition, who yearn to be cast out and punished, losing their sense of self at the feet of their lover. In the 1950s, working exclusively with Nargis, the imagery of women in Kapoor's films was saree-clad virtue. Whether they were poor in Shree 420 or rich in Awara, there was no scope for moral dithering or erotic fixation. Even when Nargis wore a swimsuit in Awara—shot indoors in a set constructed on Nargis' demand, for she refused to be outdoors in a swimsuit—Rachel Dwyer notes, 'the close up [is] of her face with her hair blowing in the wind, not one of her body.' Enter voyeurism But soon, with Nargis' exit from Kapoor's oeuvre, a voyeurism enters Kapoor's cinema. Although Vyjayantimala's scene in a swimsuit in Sangam (1964) only came after much cajoling, Kapoor seems disturbingly fixated on the idea of the exposed female body. In Bobby and Mera Naam Joker, these were used to fuel the men's first brush of desire—'pandrah-solah baras vala pyaar', the love of an adolescent, basically a hormonal surge. But from Mera Naam Joker onwards, these sexualised female bodies performed by freshly minted actresses could not muster what Michael Newton calls Nargis' 'spontaneity of feeling'. And a stilted, staged, sexed presence begins to permeate these films. 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Also Read | Awara and the Constitutional question When Zeenat Aman writes about the furore around Satyam Shivam Sundaram where she walks about wrapped in a white cloth or in tight low-cut blouses—'I was always quite amused by the accusations of obscenity as I did not and do not find anything obscene about the human body'—she is responding to the image in isolation. The human body is a site of desire. But when it is hollowed solely into a site of desire, that is uncomfortable to watch, like watching a shapely mannequin being eroticised. How do you respond to these women, over-sexed traditionalists who will caress the shivling with their face in an act of devotion, come to pujas in bursting blouses, shower under waterfalls in white wraparounds, are constantly burned, assaulted, raped, thrown into brothels? It turns the men into saviours who turn their backs on their families and their future to hold on to love as a sacred solution to all of society's ills. The male actor, then, has to be turned into a naive lover, unaware of how these sexed bodies are being looked at, unaware of how it will be made maili or sullied by the world. If they respond to the erotic body erotically, it might come off as sleazy. A man cannot say to a woman, I want to have sex with you. He has to talk about her 'tan ki sundarta', the body's beauty. In some ways, words construct meaning. But elsewhere, they seem to leach meaning. The more they say the less they mean, these joyless puppets in the fag end of Kapoor's cinema that once showed us what innocence looked like. Prathyush Parasuraman is a writer and critic who writes across publications, both print and online.
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Veteran screenwriter, lyricist, and poet Javed Akhtar was honoured with the Dostoevsky Star Award by the Russian House on June 6 in Mumbai. The award is presented for his role in promoting cultural dialogue and preserving literary heritage. At 80, Akhtar reflected on the personal significance of receiving an award named after one of his early literary influences. 'Dostoevsky is one of the most respected novelists and journalists. In our Khandala house, we have his portrait on the door of our study,' he shared. 'I don't think any Indian writer has received the Dostoevsky Star Award before.' As part of the felicitation, a book of Akhtar's poems translated into Russian by Ramdas Akella was also released during the event. Akhtar, who grew up reading Russian literature in Urdu and English translation, credited writers like Fyodor Dostoevsky, Anton Chekhov, and Maxim Gorky for shaping his narrative sensibilities. He highlighted the long-standing mutual admiration between Indian and Russian literary traditions, noting how both cultures have influenced each other through translated works. Akhtar's wife, actor Shabana Azmi, took to social media to share the moment. Posting a photo of the ceremony, she wrote, 'Another big honour for Javed Akhtar as he received the Dostoevsky Star Award! This year, the Russian House is deeply honoured to award the renowned poet, lyricist and public intellectual Mr Javed Akhtar.' Known for his iconic contributions to Indian cinema, Akhtar co-wrote classics such as Zanjeer, Sholay, Mashaal, and Lakshya, and has also been recognised for his lyrical work in countless Hindi films. Over the years, he has received five National Film Awards for Best Lyrics, the Padma Shri in 1999, the Padma Bhushan in 2007, and the Sahitya Akademi Award in Urdu for his poetry collection Lava. In 2020, he became the first Indian to receive the Richard Dawkins Award for his commitment to rationalism and critical thought.
