Retaking Center Stage

The hulking construction site on Teatralnaya square in downtown Moscow doesn't look like much. Situated on a dead-end mere blocks from the colorful spires of Red Square and the dazzling neon of Tverskaya shopping district, it's just another of the city's many renovation projects surrounded by barbed wire and covered with a thick layer of dust. But beneath rickety scaffolding, the building's towering columns and gilded fixtures tell a different story. Under renovation since 2005, this is the Bolshoi Theater, home of the fabled 231-year-old Bolshoi Ballet Company. From his cozy office in the Bolshoi's labyrinthine headquarters across the square, artistic director Alexei Ratmansky can see the theater site through a window. "The general atmosphere here is of something building — not falling apart," he says, his voice not much louder than the construction noise outside. He's not just talking about new upholstery on the theater's seats. A far more thorough renovation is going on, for Ratmansky is attempting to refurbish not just the Bolshoi's architecture, but its global stature as well. Once the world's pre-eminent classical dance company, the Bolshoi was in steep artistic decline when, in January 2004, Ratmansky was chosen, at age 35, to bring the troupe back from the brink of irrelevance and remake it into a cultural force befitting its heritage. It's a strategy that's risky yet necessary if the company is to reclaim its place not just as a custodian of the classics but also as an innovative producer of superlative new ballet. Ratmansky hopes that, like the Old Theater's crumbling facade, the Bolshoi's repertoire can be rebuilt — keeping what is old and beautiful while fixing its battered foundation.

Founded in 1776 on the orders of Catherine the Great, the Bolshoi practically defined the art form of ballet. But it did not achieve its near mythical standing until after the 1917 revolution, Moscow was made capital and the Bolshoi became a primary cultural ambassador of the newly founded Soviet Union — a role it maintained for the next seven decades. Through the years, the Old Theater's stage was home to some of dance's biggest names, including Galina Ulanova, who danced the definitive Romeo and Juliet in the 1950s, and her contemporaries, the couple Ekaterina Maximova and Vladimir Vasiliev. During the height of the cold war, it remained one of the Soviet Union's most potent exports. Beautiful and mysterious, the Russian dancers' sleek lines and avant-garde choreography dazzled Westerners.

But in the 1970s, Western dance began to catch up. Rising companies like the American Ballet Theater, the San Francisco Ballet and the Royal Ballet of Winnipeg began producing challenging new works. The Bolshoi, meanwhile, under the longtime leadership of artistic director Yuri Grigorovich and ideologically locked behind the Iron Curtain, simply stopped updating its repertoire. By the time the cold war's walls started to fall

In 1989, the grittier, jazzier, more daring Western dance had become the new global standard. Now free to emigrate legally, Russian dancers followed famous cold war defectors, like the Kirov Ballet's Mikhail Baryshnikov, West by the dozens, looking for more complex choreography, brighter fame and bigger paychecks.

In 1995, Grigorovich quit after more than three decades as artistic director, but his departure brought only more turmoil. A battle between those allied to the outgoing leader — a communist supporter and strict authoritarian — and those seeking change polarized an already embattled corps of dancers and musicians. Leadership changed hands four times between 1995 and 2004, including a stint by famed former principal dancer Vasiliev, who was unceremoniously dismissed in 2000 by Russian President Vladimir Putin himself. The short-lived replacements were all part of Russian ballet's insular old guard. "They were doing Sleeping Beauty the way it had always been done," says Andre Lewis, artistic director of Canada's Royal Winnipeg Ballet, North America's second oldest ballet company. "The Bolshoi was stultified. It needed to change."

Enter Ratmansky. Born in St. Petersburg, trained at the Moscow State Academy of Choreography and boasting professional experience with Ukraine's Kiev Ballet, the Royal Winnipeg and seven years with the Royal Copenhagen Ballet, he had already staged his productions at the Kirov Ballet in St. Petersburg, as well as a new production of Anna Karenina in Copenhagen. His knowledge of Western dance and his strength as a choreographer were, according to Bolshoi Theater director general Anatoly Iksanov, just what the company needed to reclaim its standing in the newly modernized world of ballet. With impressive choreography credentials yet no management experience, Ratmansky assumed the helm of an organization that employs more than 200 dancers and coaches and is, this season, staging more than 200 performances at home and on tour. He also oversees the newly reinvigorated Bolshoi School, the company's legendary Moscow training grounds, and its annexes in Brazil and Australia.

Before Ratmansky's arrival at Teatralnaya Square, the company's relationship with the Russian government had been on shaky ground. Toward the end of Grigorovich's tenure, as the company was consumed by internal squabbles and its touring productions were poorly received, government funding dried up. By 2000, President Putin, frustrated with ever-increasing delays in the Old Theater reconstruction project, ordered the Bolshoi to report directly to the Ministry of Culture, which would keep a tight rein on its finances. By the following year, the Bolshoi's estimated annual budget was substantially lower than other top ballet companies. But now, with more dancers, more productions, lavish tours and the very expensive Old Theater renovation, there's clearly millions more being thrown at the Bolshoi than before Ratmansky's arrival.