BEAUTY AND RESISTANCE
Alla was born in Leningrad. Her father, Eugeni, was a policeman and her mother, Nina Borovikovskaya, was a typist. She had come from an aristocratic Russian family who had lost their status with the 1917 Russian Revolution.
During the Great Purge of 1937, her father was arrested after a drunken rant about the Soviet Union. He was given a five-year prison sentence. Her parents were forced to divorce.
At the age of nine, Alla was accepted to study ballet at the Leningrad Choreographic School (nowadays the Academy of Russian Ballet). Her teacher was the acclaimed ballerina, Agrippina Vaganova.
When the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union, the whole school was evacuated to Perm. There, the conditions were tough. Alla remembered the hunger and the cold.
The students lived in barracks and practiced dancing in an abandoned church. It was so cold the girls wore mittens and coats whilst they were training .
Alla said, “If you explain to children that ballet is something for life, not everyone understands it. Our love for ballet, born under such incredible conditions, can only be sincere and consuming.”
When the Siege of Leningrad was lifted, the ballet school returned home.
As well as her classical ballet training, Alla danced contemporary parts. She graduated in 1952 and was immediately signed by the Kirov ballet (formerly, and currently, the Mariinsky company).
Her first major part was the Lilac Fairy in Sleeping Beauty.
Alla was promoted to Prima Ballerina in 1954. Tall, willowy and lithe, she had an amazing leap.
Alla was always quick to voice her opinions. As a little girl she had been told, “Your tongue is your enemy.”
She married art student Georgi Paysist, although the marriage quickly ended in divorce.
She played the leading role in many ballets including Swan Lake, The Nutcracker and Spartacus.
Alla was the preferred partner of all three of her contemporary leading Russian male ballet dancers, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Rudolf Nureyev and Yuri Soloviev.
She married another male dancer at the Kirov, Anatoly Nisnevich.
After a dress rehearsal one winter’s day, Alla slipped on an icy pavement and had a terrible fall. She tore many tendons and muscles in both her tibia and fibula. Doctors told her that her dance career was over, and she needed an operation to ensure she would even walk again.
Alla worked extremely hard at her rehabilitation – and was dancing again within a year.
In 1956, Alla was loaned to the Stanislavsky-Nemirovich Danchenko troupe for a tour of France. She performed in Paris, and was the first Kirov member to dance in the west after the start of the Cold War.
She caused such a sensation that the city awarded her the Paris Pavlova prize, for exceptional performances – very rarely given.
The following year, Alla created the role of the Mistress of Copper Mountain in Prokofiev’s ballet ‘The Stone Flower’. She wore a revealing costume – a unitard – and caused a sensation.
In 1961, Alla was selected for the Kirov’s first tour of the West, performing in Paris and London.
During this tour, Alla had an affair with another dancer, Attilio Labis.
She danced with Rudolf Nureyev in ‘Swan Lake’ in Paris, on her 29th birthday.
The following day, Nureyev defected.
When the troupe returned to the USSR, Alla was under great suspicion. She was questioned by the KGB, who then monitored her constantly. They accused her of being aware of Nureyev’s intentions, but she denied it.
She was also accused of loose morals.
Alla was offered the opportunity to join the Communist Party, to allay any suspicions about her behaviour. She refused point blank saying she was not going to have her life controlled by Party officials who had questionable standards themselves.
Nureyev was put on trial in the Soviet Union, ‘in absentia’. Alla appeared as a defence witness. She said that he had learned that a leading KGB officer had said upon the his return to Russia, he would break the dancers legs and ruin his career.
Alla finished her testimony by saying was it any wonder that her co-star defected?
This caused outrage with the authorities. Alla was immediately dropped from a forthcoming tour of the Metropolitan Opera. She was not taken on tour again throughout the rest of the 1960s (bar one ballet in Italy).
She was also removed from any of their leading performances for ten years – so she took up teaching. Her relationship with the Kirov was extremely frosty – and she remained an outspoken critic of the Soviet Union.
She also divorced Anatoly and married film star, Gennady Voropayev. They had one son, Ivan.
In 1970, the Kirov was about to undertake a tour of London, when it was revealed the leading ballerina had just had an affair with an Australian dancer.
She was dropped from the tour – and Alla was asked to step in.
In London, Alla was an absolute sensation.
On her return to the USSR, she left the Kirov (1971) and became the lead soloist in the troupe of well-known ballet master Leonid Jacobson. They were called ‘Choreographic Minatures’.
She was 39 years old and Alla later admitted that was the age that ballerinas stopped getting leading roles – so it wasn’t just her long-term conflict with the Kirov that caused her to leave. However, she also said the Kirov was, “artistically unfulfilling.”
With Jacobson, Alla performed a mixture of the classics and modern dance – a distinct change from the Kirov, who only did traditional ballet.
Alla found that she loved the modern style and a couple of years later moved to the troupe of Boris Eifman – much more experimental dance. She was moving away from traditional ballet.
However, neither Jacobson nor Eifman’s troupes were allowed to leave the USSR, so Alla was effectively lost to the west.
In 1978, she danced a duet to the music of Pink Floyd, called ‘Two Voices’ with John Markovsky, directed by Eifman.
A Russian critic said, “The more abstract the choreography, the more the various facets of her personality broke through it.”
Shortly afterwards, Alla divorced her husband and married Markovsky. This was also short-lived and ended in divorce.
Alla danced her last ballet in 1981 at the age of 49 – ‘Requiem’. In her career, she had performed many world premieres. The New York Times said she had danced, ‘The most sensuous lead parts of all ballerinas.”
French dancer Violette Verdy, a contemporary of Alla’s, said, “She employed the classical technique in a completely personal way to create shapes and emotions that one didn’t expect.”
Although retired from the stage, Alla continued to appear in the films of her close friend, director Aleksandr Sokurov. The most famous of these was ‘Russian Ark’, which won international awards.
Russian Ark is an evocation of the past and present of the Hermitage Museum in Leningrad / St Petersburg. Alla played an eccentric gadfly who haunts the Rembrandt Gallery.
Sokourov called Alla his muse.
In 1986, Alla’s son, Ivan, was arrested for ‘financial speculation’. He was selling US dollars to Soviet citizens which enabled them to use ‘Tourists Only’ shops.
He was found guilty and imprisoned. Alla intervened to negotiate a reduced sentence and a transfer to a Leningrad prison so that she could visit him. Ivan served eighteen months.
When the USSR was dissolved in 1991, Alla emigrated to the USA. She taught at the Hartford Ballet School in Connecticut. She also did spells teaching in western Europe.
She had a book of photographs published which covered her career. It was called ‘Alla Ospienko: Beauty and Resistance in Soviet Ballet’.
Her son, Ivan, died in 1997. Shortly afterwards, Alla returned to her home city, now renamed St. Petersburg, to be close to her grandson.
She started teaching at the Mihailovsky Ballet and was still working there when she died in her nineties.
In one of her last interviews, Alla was asked which of her four husbands was her favourite. She replied that film director Vladimir Naumov was the true love of her life.
Upon Alla’s death, a leading Russian ballet master said, “When she entered the studio, we felt her, even if you were standing with your back to the door. It was the magnetic aura of the greatest dancer.”
Another said, “Her dance was not just movement – it was poetry.”
She will be remembered as, “An independent artist with a sharp tongue.”
RIP – Resisting Internal Pressure
