A Coach

Rehearsal with Ekaterina Maksimova and Vladimir Vasilev

In 1960, when Galina Sergeyevna Ulanova was finishing her dancing career, Leonid Lavrovsky suggested that she would try coaching and choose a young ballerina she would like to rehearse with. Thus she started a new life of a coach at the Bolshoi Theatre, and chose Ekaterina Maximova to work with. She rehearsed with Maximova’s permanent partner and husband Vladimir Vasiliev too in their duet and separately (for example, “Ivan the Terrible”).

Among the Bolshoi ballerinas whom she also worked with there were Nina Timofeeva, Marina Kolpakchi, Lyudmila Semenyaka, Svetlana Adyrkhaeva, Malika Sabirova, Irina Prokofieva, Nadezhda Gracheva, Alla Mikhalchenko, Nina Semizorova, Ida Vasilieva, Olga Suvorova and dancer Nikolai Tsiskaridze.

As a coach, Ulanova also worked with the soloists of the Paris Grand Opera, the Hamburg Ballet, the Swedish Royal Ballet, the Australian Ballet, the Tokyo Ballet and other Japanese ballet companies.