Mr Hallberg said Ms Smirnova was “very brave” to leave the Bolshoi as she left not just a company but an institution that was “in her DNA”.
Ms. Smirnova is not the only high-profile artist to leave Russia. On the day the war started, Alexei Ratmansky, the preeminent ballet choreographer and former artistic director of the Bolshoi, was rehearsing in Moscow for a new work. He was immediately flown back home to New York, where he is artist in residence with the American Ballet Theatre, and says he is unlikely to return to Russia “if Putin is still president”.
Laurent Hilaire, the French director of the Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Ballet in Moscow, resigned a few days after the war started. And a large number of dancers, mostly foreign, have also left, including Xander Parish, who is British; Jacopo Tissi, who is Italian; and David Motta Soares and Victor Caixeta, who are Brazilian. Mr. Caixeta, an up and coming soloist, is now in Amsterdam with Ms. Smirnova. The pair are scheduled to make their debut in “Raymonda”, a classic of Russian ballet, on Saturday.
Since the invasion of Russia began, many European governments have instructed their cultural institutions, including dance companies, not to cooperate with Russian state organs such as the Mariinsky or the Bolshoi. The Dutch National Ballet has canceled a visit by the Mariinsky, withdrew from a ballet festival in Saint Petersburg and ended its collaboration with the Moscow International Ballet Competition, which was to take place in the Bolshoi in June.
Works by several prominent Western choreographers may disappear from Russian stages as those who control the rights to their ballets suspend collaboration with Russian companies. Nicole Cornell, the director of the George Balanchine Trust, which owns the rights to the choreographer’s work, said in an email that it had “interrupted all future licensing talks” with Russian companies. And Jean-Christophe Maillot, a French choreographer and director of Les Ballets de Monte Carlo, said in an email that he had asked Bolshoi to suspend performances of his “The Taming of the Shrew,” but that the general manager , Vladimir Urin, had refused. “These circumstances clearly make it difficult to resume collaboration with the Bolshoi,” Maillot said.