It is an English-feeling day – 20-odd degrees, flickers of sunshine, drizzle – but my surroundings are anything but. I am with Nina Ananiashvili, ballet star turned company director, in her office at the extravagantly neo-Moorish opera house in Tbilisi, and we are talking ahead of the State Ballet of Georgia’s first visit to England.
“You see Mother of Georgia?” says Ananiashvili, referring to the huge 1958 monument that overlooks the capital from Sololaki hill. “She has wine in one hand and in the other, a sword. So, we always say, welcome to our country, with wine, everyone who comes in friendship. But if you come against us we will fight for our country. It’s in our genes. So many Russians come here and we don’t hold anything against them – if they behave themselves.”
My visit to Tbilisi supports her words. Georgia – the world’s oldest wine-producing nation, on the eastern tip of the Black Sea – has not only its own language, but also its own script, culture and cuisine. The hilly capital has its own architecture – a unique melding of disparate styles – an astonishing natural waterfall and rapids near its centre.
Every Georgian I meet – including Ananiashvili – is charming. Yet ferociously anti-Russian graffiti is everywhere, as well as daily, international headline-grabbing protests in the streets against possible Kremlin meddling in the country’s politics. Adding fuel to the fire is that, following the 2008 Russo-Georgian war, Russia continues to occupy two separate northern areas of Georgia.
Ananiashvili (61, her Christian name is Nino in Georgian) has long had an emotional connection to both countries. Born in Georgia in 1963, she is one of the most celebrated prima ballerinas of the 20th century. In Georgia, she is also something of a national heroine.
“I always say I’m Georgian. It doesn’t matter where I was dancing, I am born Georgian, I am Georgian, I die Georgian. And I’m proud of that. I was proud also because if you see my newspaper articles around the world, they always said Nina Ananiashvili looks different from other ballerinas from the Bolshoi. So, all my life, I was proud to be a child of my country.”
But the most protracted and formative part of her training took place in Moscow. It was over her 20-plus years as a star of the Bolshoi, from 1981-2004 (alongside stellar positions at American Ballet Theatre and then Houston Ballet) that she made a name for herself as a dancer of rare dynamism, versatility and dramatic power, as stirring as Juliet or Giselle as she was stylish in the coolly abstract works of Balanchine.
“Right now we have a nervous situation here,” she says. “But I can say generally, I am a Bolshoi ballerina – I was ‘born’ as a ballerina in the Bolshoi. My coach, my teacher, they were the people who ‘raised’ me – I mean, raised me as a ballerina.”
So are her loyalties divided? A proud Georgian who’s also a proud ex-Bolshoi member?
“This is my life!” she says. “I bring what I learned there to here – but it doesn’t mean I like what’s happening.”
We will soon be able to see for ourselves what this remarkable, intensely likeable force of nature has brought to the 175-year-old company over the 20 years since then-Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili invited her to run and revitalise the company. Under Communism, it made Tbilisi (along with Moscow, St Petersburg and Kyiv) one of the USSR’s main centres for ballet, but had since slipped into the doldrums.
Over 11 days in August and September at the London Coliseum, the State Ballet of Georgia will perform Swan Lake. With the Bolshoi and Mariinsky – both of which used to visit London regularly – now personae non gratae in the West, there’s a void begging to be filled. And, to judge by its lavishly theatrical production of The Sleeping Beauty, which I caught in Tbilisi, the auguries are good.
Although as Ananiashvili suggests the staging is stylistically and choreographically informed by her time with the Bolshoi, there is one crucial difference: concision. For one thing, where the famous 1895 version of Tchaikovsky’s ballet is almost invariably danced with two intervals, this production has just one: “We do first and second acts together, then third and forth together.” What’s more, Ananiashvili and her former dance (now creative) partner Alexei Fadeyechev have also pruned the ballet itself, meaning that instead of the usual three hours their production comes in at a more digestible two hours and 15 minutes.
Why was compression necessary? Recalling times when she herself was in the Bolshoi audience, Ananiashvili says, “I remember everybody leaving when they’d seen the Black Swan pas de deux [in Act III] – nobody wanted to see the fourth act, because it’s so boring and long.
“Even in Georgia – where we like classical ballet – the audience is different today. We are all rushing, as if clocks go quicker. And if we make audiences sit for hours we’ll lose them. So we think, how can we make this so that we don’t ruin anything, and if you watch, you don’t miss anything?”
Starring in London as Odette-Odile and Prince Siegfried will be principal Laura Fernandez (26, half-Ukrainian, half-Spanish but born in Switzerland) and soloist Filippo Montanari (22, from a small town near Rimini in north-east Italy).
Smart, beautiful and both speaking fantastic English, they both express a profound admiration and affection for their leader.
“With some directors,” says Montanari, “you have this idea of them being a dreadful kind of entity – not even like a person, just your director. But with Nina you understand that she was born not only to be a great ballerina, but also a great teacher.
“You can’t take for granted that these two things will go together – she’s one of a kind.”
“I also love my previous director,” says Fernandez, tactfully, “but this one, I feel she’s my second mum here. She takes care of me, she helps me also in my private life – it’s not just about ballet, so a big support for me comes from her.”
Fernandez has needed pastoral care. Formerly a first soloist with the Stanislavsky Theatre in Moscow, she swiftly found life untenable there after Russia’s 2020 invasion of Ukraine. Drawn by Ananiashvili’s reputation as a creative force, she decided to give Tbilisi a go.
“Because of the war it was difficult for me [in Moscow] at that time because I had relatives in Mariupol in Ukraine,” she says. “People were telling me how it will end soon – ‘Just four days, and it will be over.’ And it didn’t end. Then my relatives somehow started to disappear for some days – we didn’t have any contact, because the connection was so bad – so we didn’t know if they were still alive or not.”
It must have been terrifying. “Yes, especially because I have a cousin who is really like my brother. He doesn’t have a mum, so my mum was kind of caring for him.”
Fernandez and Montanari are both thrilled to be dancing in London, as is Ananiashvili about returning to the city in which she once performed as a guest artist with the Royal Ballet.
“I was so sad I never returned to the Royal Ballet after [starring in The Firebird in] 1993,” says Ananiashvili, adding with a glint in her eye, “But I think they were jealous because I went to the United States.”
“Now I’m happy to introduce a new generation of dancers to London. It’s the first time for this company and I’m being careful about what I say, because to perform in London is not easy. This I know: audiences are knowledgeable, and they have these magic companies there, and lots of modern companies, too.”
And horrid people like me with notepads? She roars with laughter and squeezes my hand warmly. “Let’s go to lunch!”
State Ballet of Georgia will perform ‘Swan Lake’ at the London Coliseum, WC2, from Aug 28-Sept 8. Tickets: londoncoliseum.org
Source Agencies
