The 16th June 1961 and 17th January 2013 are two indelible dates in the annals of Russian ballet. Two events that left the world gobsmacked — the escape of a Cold War fugitive and an acid attack by a subordinate on his boss — all enhanced in strangeness and sensational interest because they came out of the ballet world, a world largely closed to the rest of us. By a coincidence that’s as informative as it is lucky, two gripping documentary films emerge right now which tell these stories with dramatic effect, but also suggest a cultural link between the defection of the Kirov’s bad boy Rudolf Nureyev and the ghastly assault upon the Bolshoi Ballet artistic director Sergei Filin.
Chaos is implied in both situations, whether the hyper-incompetent Soviet surveillance state that Richard Curson Smith’s Rudolf Nureyev — Dance to Freedom for the BBC elucidates, or the appallingly unruly state of affairs inside the modern Bolshoi itemised in Nick Read and Mark Franchetti’s Bolshoi Babylon for cinema release. But chaos caused largely by a habit of mind not seriously modified by time.
The Bolshoi film follows the return to work of the scarred and part-blinded ballet director Filin, and his inevitable crash to the ground in the ruthless world of Russian powerplay. Attacked on moral grounds during the trial of his attacker, a resentful Bolshoi dancer, Filin emerges as an enigmatic and controversial character, as the documentary attempts to explain the ‘why’ of events, whereas the Nureyev film details the ‘what’ and ‘how’. Why is always going to be difficult with the obscure, emotional, fatalistic Russians.
Bolshoi Babylon opens with a solemn Russian voice asserting that chaos in the Bolshoi is entwined with chaos in the state. This mantra was widely cited in the world’s media after the attack, indicating the apparently comfortable belief that Russia is a special case, that beneath beauty there must always be pain and corruption, and it is pointless to resist.
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