“I have to be honest and say that I am against war with all my soul. I never believed that I could be ashamed of Russia, but today I feel that there is a before and an after”, declared one of the star ballerinas of the Bolshoi, Olga Smirnovala, on the social network Telegram at the beginning of the month.
As a result, she decided to leave the prestigious troupe to join the Dutch National Ballet in Amsterdam, becoming the first Russian dancer in the company to take this step since the start of the invasion of Ukraine.
The dancer had been thinking about leaving the Bolshoi for a while
“Olga Smirnova has been very clear in her recent denunciation of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which makes her work in her native country untenable,” the Dutch National Ballet said in a statement on Wednesday. He adds that the dancer, whose grandfather is Ukrainian, had been thinking of leaving the Bolshoi for a while but that “the current circumstances had accelerated this process”.
Several foreign dancers from the Russian ballet troupes had announced their departure in solidarity with the victims of the conflict in Ukraine, but Olga Smirnova is the first Russian dancer to take this step publicly. The Brazilian soloist Victor Caixeta, who was a rising star of the Mariinsky of Saint Petersburg, will also join the Dutch National Ballet.