Iurii Grigorovich

Born Jan. I, 1927, in Leningrad. Soviet ballet dancer and choreographer. People’s Artist of the USSR since 1973.

Grigorovich graduated from the Leningrad Choreographic School from the class of B. V. Shavrov and A. A. Pisarev in 1946. Until 1964 he danced with the Leningrad S. M. Kirov Ballet and Opera Theater, where he also worked as a choreographer from 1962 to 1964. Since 1964 he has been principal choreographer of the Bolshoi Theater. Grigorovich’s productions at the Kirov Theater of Prokofiev’s Stone Flower (1957) and Melikov’s Legend of Love (1961), both of which were later staged by him at the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow (1959 and 1965), were outstanding events in ballet art. He also staged the ballet Stone Flower at the theaters of Novosibirsk (1959). Tallinn (1961), Stockholm (1962), and Sofia (1965). Both ballets offer a synthesis of choreographic harmony, strong dramatic impact, and psychological analysis of the characters. Highly successful was Grigorovich’s production of Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker at the Bolshoi Theater in 1966, in which an impressive fusion of music and choreography in an integral system of images and logical development of action was attained. In his production of A. I. Khachaturian’s Spartacus (1967; Lenin Prize, 1970), Grigorovich for the first time conveyed the ballet’s folk heroic theme by means of symphonic classical dance (that is, dance that is suggestive of a symphony, especially in form, the interweaving of themes, or harmonious arrangement).