03-04-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Olga Smirnova, a da Vinci of Ballet, Settles Into a New Life, New Rep
Frantic corrections filled the main studio of the Dutch National Ballet on a recent afternoon. A new Shakespeare adaptation, 'Lady Macbeth,' was about to go onstage, and the choreographer, Helen Pickett, and her assistants crisscrossed the room to deliver last-minute changes or tweak the positioning of an arm.
Then Olga Smirnova, a former star of the Bolshoi Ballet, stepped forward for a solo, and the room went still. With her back turned, Smirnova reached behind herself slowly. Her supple arms and fingers unfurled with a quiver, instantly conjuring Lady Macbeth's tangled emotions.
'It's like watching da Vinci work,' Pickett said with a contented sigh after the rehearsal.
Until 2022, Smirnova's blend of technical mastery and dramatic intensity made her one of Russia's most in-demand ballerinas, with a vast repertoire of leading roles at the Bolshoi and the prestige that comes with it in her country. Then, weeks after country invaded Ukraine, she announced she would leave it all behind and join the Dutch National Ballet.
In a post to the messaging app Telegram, Smirnova, who had a Ukrainian grandfather, wrote that she was 'ashamed of Russia' and opposed the war 'with all the fibers of my soul.' While a number of foreigners who worked in Russian ballet companies departed around the same time, Smirnova remains the most high-profile Russian dancer to have publicly made the move. Image Olga Smirnova and Timothy van Poucke rehearsing 'Lady Macbeth' at the Dutch National Ballet in Amsterdam. Credit... Jussi Puikkonen for The New York Times
The personal cost has been significant, Smirnova, 33, said in an interview in Amsterdam. Three years on, she still has 'very little contact' with her former colleagues and friends in Russia. Her parents struggled to understand her decision; she has not seen them since the war began, although she's working to find a way: 'I still want to have my family as my family.'
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