Ismene Brown interviews Nina Ananiashvili

[stucha]

 

[Emeralds]

Thank you for posting this, @stucha. What a fascinating and inspiring interview. 

 

I never knew Nina joined the Bolshoi school without knowing to speak or read Russian (the writing being different to Georgian script). That may explain why Nina always had this quality of fearlessness- she had gone through such testing challenges as an adolescent (I mean difficulty, not trauma), and she brought that level of grit and diligence to everything she did. You knew she would always pull it off. Unlike many Bolshoi and Mariinsky/Kirov guest artists at the time, she consistently managed to put in the time and work to learn the unfamiliar styles of Ashton, MacMillan and Balanchine to do their ballets justice. Bought tickets to her performances whenever I could- it was such a wonderful experience to see her dance.

 

Sadly, despite her busy international career at ABT, Bolshoi and other companies as a guest (including RB) or a principal, there aren't as many recordings of Ananiashvili as there ought to be.