Nina Ananiashvili’s office at Tbilisi Opera and Ballet Theatre looks like a backstage dressingroom nestled into a spacious apartment. A red-and-black tutu stands next to glass-encased photographs of Ananiashvili and other famous ballet dancers; a make-up mirror, fully lit by a frame of round bulbs, could have been transported directly from behind the stage.
Magazines featuring Ananiashvili on their covers adorn a glass coffee table near an imposing wooden desk where her assistant fields calls. Dancers and costume designers knock softly at the door, receiving answers to their questions as Ananiashvili simultaneously talks about the State Ballet of Georgia’s upcoming tour, which includes a stop in Ireland.
As one of the Bolshoi Ballet’s most renowned ballerinas, she was lauded for her exquisite artistry and technique. Now she is sharing her legacy by heading Georgia’s national ballet company. When audiences watch her dancers perform Swan Lake this month, during their first visit to Dublin, they will see the work of a company built on a stellar tradition, as well, perhaps, as appreciating the transformation she has brought as artistic director.
Ananiashvili, who grew up in Tbilisi, came to ballet after first learning to skate. Blessed with natural grace and performance ability, she enrolled in the Georgian State Choreographic School as a girl before moving to Moscow Choreographic School, a pathway familiar for dancers who enter the Bolshoi. She was invited to join the company in 1981, her career blossoming under the tutelage of her coach, the ballerina Raisa Struchkova.
After endearing herself to the Bolshoi’s audiences, Ananiashvili became one of the first dancers at the company to be allowed to travel and perform beyond Moscow. While maintaining her status as a principal dancer, and appearing as a guest artist with companies such as American Ballet Theatre, she eventually created a touring ensemble that became known as Nina Ananiashvili and Principals of the Bolshoi Ballet.
“I was so lucky, so lucky,” Ananiashvili says, sitting on the couch in her office. “When Perestroika started I had the freedom to travel, because I had a second passport. This gave me the freedom of dancing in different places, different countries, and working with different choreographers.”
Nina Ananiashvili and Principals of the Bolshoi Ballet performed in cities such as Copenhagen, Paris, Dallas and Tokyo, impressing audiences with their technical prowess. Ananiashvili also charmed audiences with her charisma. Her reputation prompted the president of the Republic of Georgia to contact Ananiashvili in 2004, asking her to return to Tbilisi to direct the country’s national ballet company.
“I was quite busy. I was dancing everywhere, like in Japan, around the world, everything,” she says. “When the president calls you and says, ‘I need your help – and, please, if not you, who can help me to bring back the name of the opera house? It was difficult, but at the same point it was, like, how I can say no?”
It began a new era for Ananiashvili and for ballet in Georgia. The state company, which now performs around the world, employs more than 70 dancers, most of whom are Georgian. Others come from Japan, Italy and Ukraine. Dancers are hired via auditions in Tbilisi or through video auditions and international ballet competitions, such as Switzerland’s Prix de Lausanne or the Youth America Grand Prix. The company’s typical season includes full-length classics as well as some contemporary ballets; dancers are drawn to its repertoire and to the chance to work with Ananiashvili.
“It’s a great privilege to work with Nina. She is one of the top 12 ballerinas of the last century,” Filippo Montanari, one of the company’s soloists, says. “The way she attends the rehearsal, I’ve never seen somebody so active. Sometimes she can give you a correction by basically just sitting and speaking. Then she gets up and starts doing some pas de deux with you, and you have the great Nina Ananiashvili back again. I always smile, because it’s incredible.”
“She pays attention to such small details,” says Laura Fernandez, a leading soloist. “I remember my first month here. She rehearsed Romeo and Juliet with me, and we had two hours’ rehearsal in the studio, but it wasn’t enough. So we went into a small gym room, and without pointe shoes we continued for an hour and a half with corrections and suggestions. The way she shows everything is incredible. She’s so free. You learn by just watching her.”
Before Ananiashvili took over the company, Georgia’s masculine folk-dance traditions received more attention than its classical ballet. Dating back to the fifth century BC, Georgian folk dance melds intricate footwork with acrobatics: the solo and group dances can be show-stopping in their bravura. It influence is clear in ballet, among other traditions, where strong jumps show off the men’s power and agility.
Ananiashvili’s tenure has put Georgia’s classical ballet in the spotlight not just because of her reputation as a dancer but also because of the deep pride with which she leads her company. At a lunch that a group of us have with her in Tbilisi, Ananiashvili raises a glass of Georgian wine and bows elegantly. “I’d like to toast the reason we have all come together,” she says – “because of art.”
For someone who has danced with Mikhail Baryshnikov at dinner parties and whose performances have prompted half-hour curtain calls, Ananiashvili’s humility is refreshing. Later that day, when a group of associates ask her to pose for a photograph, she says “Stomachs in!” with a smile as the picture is taken. It’s a familiar refrain for dancers at the ballet barre, and one Ananiashvili carries into life with a sense of humour.
In the rehearsal studio she hugs some dancers and gives others corrections on their technique, attending to the minutiae of getting a ballet from the studio to the stage while maintaining a positive working environment.
The trust and team-building she cultivates began 20 years ago when Georgia’s president told her she was free to hire dancers but that they would not immediately be paid. “In 2004 there was no light, no heat and no salary for the company,” she says. “I said, ‘I know it will be very hard. Before you all liked me, because I was coming as a guesting ballerina. But now, if I work here, I think it will not be easy for you. But let’s try.’
“And then I heard the dancers don’t have a salary at all. So I called the company together and I said, ‘Guys, I won’t force you, because I understand what this means, no salary. We can start work after November or we work now for three months to have a premiere and in November you will have a salary.’ They all worked for nothing for three months and we did it. When I remember that I still want to cry.”
Ananiashvili has built a formidable organisation over the past two decades. It now has a more robust budget; world-class dancers, teachers and choreographers; an affiliated ballet school; and a repertoire that includes classics such as Swan Lake. The company develops principal dancers who benefit from the kind of personalised coaching Ananiashvili received at the Bolshoi while fostering a unified corps de ballet. She understands the changing tastes of audiences and has streamlined Swan Lake and other lengthy classics, such as The Sleeping Beauty, into two-act ballets with one interval. She does all this while drawing people into her orbit who are equally passionate about the art form.
“My mission is to keep classical ballet at the high level,” she says, “because sometimes when I hear, ‘Oh, classical ballet will die,’ I say, ‘My God, classical ballet was living before us and it will live after us.’ Definitely, definitely. There will be an up and down period; maybe it will always be like this. Maybe somebody will forget it, but then somebody will bring it back. Of this I am sure.”
Mention of Russia’s war with Ukraine hovers at the edges of many conversations during our weekend in Tbilisi. Some of the company’s administrative staff were accompanying the dancers on tour when Russia invaded Georgia in 2008. Others have family members living in Russia now.
Ananiashvili is used to navigating art and politics, just as she did when travelling as a dancer during perestroika. She no longer goes to Russia or hires Russian dancers, but she maintains the relationships she has cultivated throughout her career, including at the Bolshoi.
“My colleagues and I, we are friendly, and if I wanted to invite them they can come and work. I mean, I don’t have this problem, just the political situation is the problem, but not friendship. I cannot turn out of my life the 30 years which I was spending there. The knowledge, school and everything, I am thankful for all of this.”
The State Ballet of Georgia’s aesthetic is heavily influenced by the Russian ballet style. That becomes apparent in productions such as The Sleeping Beauty and Swan Lake, which emphasise drama and encourage lead dancers to take the spotlight, reminiscent of Russian companies’ tendencies to capitalise on dancers’ star power. The lavish costumes and sets also provide a sense of spectacle more common in Russian ballets.
Many of the company’s dancers have been trained in the Russian style and have performed in Russia, including Fernandez, who danced with the Mariinsky Theatre in St Petersburg and the Moscow State Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Music Theatre before joining the State Ballet of Georgia. When the war in Ukraine broke out, Fernandez, whose mother is Ukranian and father is Italian, decided to leave Russia.
“Of course it was difficult to leave my company, because I loved it there, but I just tried to see it as a new opportunity, a new stage of life,” she says. “And, yeah, it shouldn’t impact ballet in general. I mean, I think ballet is an art and it should not be political. Unfortunately, I see it’s getting pulled into politics a lot. I understand. Still, it’s difficult to see.”
Ananiashvili’s ability to focus on ballet during tense political times may be one of the greatest gifts she passes on to her dancers. At one performance of The Sleeping Beauty in Tbilisi, political protests began to swell in the streets near the theatre as Georgians, most of them young, massed to oppose their parliament’s motion to limit foreign presence and investment in the country. Some of the dancers hung up their costumes at the end of the night and joined the protesters on the streets. Never during the weekend we spend with the company does Ananiashvili mention that she is married to Grigol Vashadze, a member of the Georgian parliament who was once nominated for the presidency.
“You know, it is always very, very good when you are presenting your country, especially now, especially for Georgia,” Ananiashvili says. “When you already have a house name like Bolshoi or Mariinsky it’s so easy, because it’s already a name. But when nobody knows about you, and you present your country and your culture at this level, I think this is important for me and it’s very important for my country, too. So this is what I want to show. In Georgia we have classical ballet and classical music ... on the world level.”
The State Ballet of Georgia perform Swan Lake at the Bord Gáis Energy Theatre, Dublin, from Wednesday, November 20th, to Sunday, November 24th
