An outstanding Russian choreographer of the 20th century. Grigorovich was the soloist of the Maryinsky Theatre for 18 years and later for a short time headed its ballet. His first productions at the Kirov were «The Stone Flower» and «The Legend of Love». They marked the birth of a new choreographer soon to be known all over the world and of a new trend that many years determined the development of ballet in Russia.

Since 1964 and for over 30 years Grigorovich has been the choreographer-in-chief of the Bolshoy Theatre. It was the time of the greatest achievements in the artistic activity of the company, when it won the world acknowledgment and authority. The Bolshoy Theatre with Grigorovich at the head made international tours over than 90 times. He established the leadership of Russian Classic Ballet everywhere in the world and brought to the world stage brilliant dancers.

In Moscow Yuri Grigorovich created ballets which won the world-wide reputation, among them «The Nutcracker» (1966), «Spartacus» (1968), «Ivan the Terrible» (1975), «Angara» (1976), «Romeo and Juliet», «The Golden Age» (1982). He also choreographed new versions of such masterpieces of the past as: «The Sleeping Beauty» (1963, 1973) and «Swan Lake», «Raymonda» (1984), «La Bayadere» (1991) and «Don Quixote», «Giselle» (1987) and «Le Corsaire» (1994).

According to the Russian critic Poel Karp, «Grigorovich kept to the type of Petipa’s «grand ballet», but he wanted his ballets to the strongly built dramatically and have unity of style. Thus he created a new genre «Grigorovich’s grand ballet».
Yuri Grigorovich staged his ballets in Stockholm, Rome, Paris, Copenhagen, Vienna, Milano, Ankara, Prague, Sofia, Genoa, Warsaw.

Born in March 9,10, 1885, St. Petersburg, Russia--d. May 26, 1978, Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire, Eng.), Anglo-Russian ballerina whose partnership with Vaslav Nijinsky in Mikhail Fokine's avant-garde ballets helped to revive interest in ballet in western Europe.

The daughter of a famous dancer, Platon Karsavin, she was educated at the Imperial Ballet School, St. Petersburg, under such teachers as Cecchetti, Christian Johansson, and Paul Gerdt, graduating in 1902. As ballerina at the Mariinsky Theatre she included in her repertoire Giselle and Odette-Odile in Swan Lake. Karsavina is best known as the leading ballerina of Sergey Diaghilev's Ballets Russes from its beginning in 1909 until 1922. Between 1909 and 1914 she created the majority of famous roles in Fokine's Neoromantic repertoire, including Les Sylphides, Le Spectre de la Rose, Carnaval, Firebird, Petrushka, and Thamar. She also created leading roles in L?onide Massine's The Three-Cornered Hat and Pulcinella. She came out of semiretirement in the early 1930s to revive some of her more famous roles for the Ballet Rambert and to create new ones for Frederick Ashton. After marrying the English diplomat Henry James Bruce, Karsavina went to London (1918), where she helped found the Roysal Academy of Dancing (1920), for which she organised the Teachers' Training Course and the Camargo Society (1930). She also coached Margot Fonteyn.