Bolshoi Ballet

The earliest iteration of the Bolshoi Ballet can be found in the creation of a dance school for a Moscow orphanage in 1773. In 1776, dancers from the school were employed by Prince Pyotr Vasilyevich Urusov and English theatrical entrepreneur Michael Maddox to form part of their new theatre company. Originally performing in privately owned venues, they later acquired the Petrovsky Theatre, which, as a result of fires and erratic redevelopment, would later be rebuilt as today's Bolshoi Theatre. While some guest dancers come and go from other prestigious ballet companies, such as Mariinsky and American Ballet Theatre, most company dancers are graduates of the academy. In 1989, Michael Shannon was the first American ballet dancer to graduate from the Bolshoi Ballet Academy and join the Bolshoi Ballet company.

Despite staging many famous ballets, it struggled to compete with the reputation of the Imperial Russian Ballet, today's Mariinsky Ballet of St. Petersburg. It was not until the appointment of Alexander Gorsky as Ballet Master in 1900 that the company began to develop its own unique identity, with acclaimed productions of new or restaged ballets including Don Quixote (1900), Coppélia (1901), Swan Lake (1901), La fille mal gardée (1903), Giselle (1911), Le Corsaire (1912) and La Bayadère (1917).

The Soviet leadership's preference for uncomplicated moral themes in the arts was demonstrated in Yuri Grigorovich's appointment as director in 1964. Grigorovich held his position until 1995, at which point a series of directors, including Boris Akimov, Alexei Ratmansky, Yuri Burlaka and Sergei Filin, brought more modern dance performance ideas to the company.

Controversies

In 2013, ballerina Anastasia Volochkova claimed that female dancers were forced to sleep with wealthy patrons, saying: "It mainly happened with the corps du [sic] ballet but also with the soloists. [...] I repeatedly received such propositions to share the beds of oligarchs." American dancer Joy Womack echoed this concern when she left the company after being told that, to secure solo roles, she must either pay $10,000 or "start a relationship with a sponsor."

In January 2013, a sulfuric acid attack on art director Sergei Filin once again steeped the company in scandal. Bolshoi dancer Pavel Dmitrichenko was convicted of organizing the attack and was sentenced to six years in prison. Reasons for the attack include corruption within the company.

In 2014, 25-year-old ballet dancer Olga Demina mysteriously went missing. In September 2020, Russian investigators announced that they believe Demina may have been killed in a blackmail plot by Malkhaz Dzhavoev, whom she was dating and was allegedly her "manager".

In July 2017, the Bolshoi Theatre cancelled the premiere of a ballet about openly gay Soviet dancer Rudolf Nureyev. The Director General claimed that it was due to poor dancing quality; however, principal dancer Maria Alexandrova claimed it was the first sign of a 'new era' of censorship. It was the first time a show has been pulled in such a way since the collapse of the Soviet Union, sparking rumours about the motivation behind the move.

In 2022, the Bolshoi Ballet, like the Mariinsky Ballet, removed the name of choreographer Alexei Ratmansky from his ballets, owing to his opposition to Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. However, it continued to perform the ballets without Ratmansky's permission. He stated that he intended to sue the company.

In the spring of 2025, allegations emerged that critics were offered bribes to write positive reviews about the debut of Maria Shuvalova, daughter of former first deputy prime minister Igor Shuvalov, in the title role in Anyuta. Despite the controversy surrounding the quality of her performances, Shuvalova was promoted to the rank of soloist in July 2025.