Yuri Wladimirowitsch Solowjow

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Yuri Soloviev ( Russian Юрий Владимирович Соловьёв ; IPA : [juɾʲi vl̴ɐdʲimʲiɾəvʲiɕ sɐl̴ɐvʲjɔf] * 10. August 1940 in Leningrad ; † 12. July 1977 in the Leningrad Oblast ) was the first solo dancer of the Kirov Ballet , Russia. He was a contemporary of Rudolf Nureyev and Mikhail Baryshnikov , and a partner of Natalja Makarowa , Alla Sisowa and others.

Career

Solovyov began his ballet training at the age of nine and was a student of Boris Shavrov for the last four years of his training. He was in the same senior year at the Vaganova Academy as Rudolf Nureyev. At first he was only a member of the corps de ballet , but quickly rose to the rank of soloist. He was Rudolf Nureyev's roommate during the company's tour of Paris when Nureyev fled to the West. Solovyov also received rave reviews from French and British dance critics. In later years Nureyev had often expressed his admiration for Soloviev's dance technique, despite their rivalry.

Solovyov was considered a "cosmic Yuri" by the Western and Soviet audiences because of his jumps and his physical resemblance to the Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin . He has been compared to Vaslav Nijinsky because of his technique and especially his lifting technique . In 1961 and 1964 he toured the United States and Europe with the Kirov Ballet . His best-known roles were the thrush and the prince in Sleeping Beauty and the solor in La Bayadère . He has also appeared in new ballets, including as Icarus in Sergei Slonimsky 's ballet of the same name , as "God" in "Creation of the World" (both in the choreography by Leonid Jacobson), as a young man in the Leningrad Symphony and as a man in Constantine Sergeev's Distant Planet .

He injured an Achilles tendon while touring America and his left leg has never fully recovered. Because of his strong sense of duty and his penchant for perfectionism, Solovyov was never satisfied with his performance, but refused to simplify his performance or to withdraw entirely from ballet.

In 1963 he received the Nijinsky Prize of the Paris Academy of Dance. He was a gold medalist at the Paris International Dance Competition in 1965 and was named People's Artist of the USSR in 1973. Despite considerable pressure from the KGB (especially after Nureyev's flight) and from Kirov management, Solovyov never joined the party .

The last production he was involved in was Leonid Lebedev's Die Infanta with Irina Kolpakova (* 1933) as a guest in the Maly Theater in 1976 . His last appearance on stage was Romeo in Romeo and Juliet , with Kolpakova as Juliet.

On January 12, 1977, he was found dead in his dacha near Leningrad with a wound to his head from a shotgun, which he believed he had inflicted on himself. His death shocked his colleagues at the Kirov. He was survived by his wife, the ballerina Tatiana Legat and their daughter Jelena Solowjowa.

Films with Yuri Solovyov

There are quite a number of TV recordings by Yuri Solovyov. In the film he played in the role of Prince Désire in Sergeev's version of Sleeping Beauty (1965). It was the subject of a Galina Mshanskaya documentary that illustrated Soloviev's frustrations as an artist under the Soviet system. This was done in the portrait, "I'm Tired of Living in My Home Country" (1995), shown at Lincoln Center as well as other film festivals in the United States.