In Memory of Maya Plisetskaya: I'm Dying, Dying Swan

MAYA PLISETSKAYA (Nov 20 1925 - May 2 2015) - written by win081
Maya Plisetskaya died at age 89 in Munich yesterday on May 2, 2015. She was a Soviet ballet dancer, choreographer and one of the greatest ballerinas of the 20th century. When she was 10 years old, her father (a director in the Soviet coal industry) was arrested and later executed during the Stalinist purges in 1938. Her mother (a film maker and actress) was arrested soon after that and sent to a Gulag camp in Kazakhstan for three years. While in Bolshoi, Maya Plisetskaya was always under political repression because of the family history and her defiant personality until Premier Nikita Khrushchev personally allowed her to tour outside the country in 1959. After that, she took over Galina Ulanova's title as the "Prima Ballerina Asssoluta" of the Bolshoi one year later in 1960.

Because of the bitter family history and the defiant personality, Maya Plisetskaya had always been a fearless critic toward the Soviet authorities and communism. Because of this, many politicians in the West tried to get acquainted with her and encouraged her to defect to the West. Robert F Kennedy (brother of the then US president John F Kennedy) even invited Maya Plisetskaya to the private gatherings at their beach-front family estate immediately after the Cuba Missile Crisis between Soviet and the US in October 1962 with the expectation that it would be a huge embarrassment to Soviet government if Maya Plisetskaya decided to defect to the US at that time.

But unlike many other Soviet dancers (namely, Rudolf Nureyev, Natalia Makarova and Mikhail Baryshnikov); Maya Plisetskaya had always turned down the "invitations" to defect to the West. She once said in an interview that "defecting is a moral issue" and “he who runs to the enemy's side is a traitor.” Because of this, Maya Plisetskaya had won the high respects from the political leaders of the both sides of the Cold War.

Maya Plisetskaya had many highly acclaimed leading roles in the large scale ballet suites, but her solo performance in the interpretation of the "Dying Swan" is considered to be far more exquisite than what could be achieved by any other dancer in the world. The "Dying Swan" is a short piece of hunting melody from the "Swan" (Le Cygne) in the "Carnival of Animals" (Le Carnaval des Animaux) by French composer Camille Saint-Saëns.

In Memory of Maya Plisetskaya (Nov 20 1925 - May 2 2015): I'm Dying (from "Carmen"), Dying Swan (Choreography by Mikhaila Fokine, 1975).
В Память Майя Плисецкая (20 ноября 1925 - 2 мая 2015): Я умру ("Кармен"), Умирающий лебедь ( (Хореография Михаила Фокина, 1975r).

Видео In Memory of Maya Plisetskaya: I'm Dying, Dying Swan канала win081