Latest news with #Smirnova
New York Times
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.' Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times. Thank you for your patience while we verify access. Already a subscriber? Log in. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
BBC News
07-03-2025
- General
- BBC News
South East: 'We were refugees, but now we're entrepreneurs'
Yudit Kibrom said she "could not believe" she had made it to the UK after arriving at Dover hidden in the back of a lorry filled with onions. The then 16-year-old had travelled from Eritrea on a months-long journey, in which she said she was forced to drink water mixed with petrol in the desert due to thirst and constantly feared for her Kibrom told the BBC she fled "oppression" in the east African country, which the monitor Human Rights Watch has described as having one of the world's most repressive regimes. Granted refugee status in 2011, she began college but had to drop out as she got pregnant. Without anyone to help her, Ms Kibrom became a taxi driver so she could fit work around childcare, but said she wanted to be independent and so founded a driving school in Canterbury."It was quite hard," the now 35-year-old said. "But I got there." Overcoming many challenges along the way, she said DLS Driving School was the "best thing" in her life."I'm doing something really good to help the community," Ms Kibrom told the BBC, adding how happy she is when she sees former pupils waving at her driving past. She said she was "not here to rip people off or ruin the country" and refugees like her were "working really hard". Having fled Russia's 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Larysa Smirnova arrived in the UK in May 2022 with her nine-year-old son and just one told the BBC she was warmly welcomed by a host family in Surrey. But the 31-year-old, who ran her own company before the war, said she soon wanted to support herself. With her Ukrainian engineering degree not recognised in the UK, she said she took every job she could, cleaning people's homes, windows and gardening, often communicating with customers through Google Translate as she did not speak English. 'I see my future here' "When you are working you are not worried," Ms Smirnova said. "You don't have time to spend thinking about what is happening to your friends and family back home." "It was emotional," she added. "It was hard. But I did every job as good as I could." Ms Smirnova said she saved for several months to buy equipment, only spending money on essentials, and was eventually able to establish her own cleaning business in Godalming, which employs people in the local area."I like England," she told the BBC. "I see my future here." While studying at Kent University, Basma Eldoukhi founded a social enterprise called Roouh, which sells artistic handicrafts made by Palestinian refugee women in Lebanon through an online told the BBC the enterprise allows the women to share their "stories of displacement and life in the camps" in what they make, besides providing employment in a "difficult economic situation". The products also help inform people about Palestinian history and heritage, Ms Eldoukhi added. "Some people in the UK can look at Palestinians as victims," the 35-year-old said. "By bringing their art and culture to the country we can humanise them."That... [can] bring people together rather than showing us that we are all so different." Ms Eldoukhi, who described herself as a "Palestinian from a background of displacement", came to the UK as a student in 2019. She told the BBC her main challenge now was how to scale up the enterprise she had built on her own, alongside her studies."I have a lot of ideas, but don't have the time," she said.
