Intrigue may be all the rage at the Bolshoi Ballet, but the company showed Paris in May it is still at the top of its game, with Natalia Osipova, Ivan Vasiliev and Maria Alexandrova all wowing astounded crowds. I caught up during the two-week tour with Sergei Filin, who seems to have transitioned seamlessly from star danseur noble to artistic director at a tricky time for the Moscow troupe. We had a chat in the Palais Garnier’s orchestra while the stage was being set for Don Quixote, and the resulting Q&A is in the latest issue of Pointe Magazine.

Cover of the August/September 2011 issue © Pointe Magazine

For all its high-wattage stars, the Bolshoi Ballet can still be laid low by internal politics. In March, a fresh scandal left it without a replacement for departing artistic director Yuri Burlaka. Former principal Sergei Filin, who had been at the helm of Moscow’s Stanislavsky Ballet, stepped in at the eleventh hour. He spoke to Pointe about the Bolshoi’s unique challenges at a momentous time for the company: Its historical stage, closed for restoration since 2005, is set to reopen this fall.

Pointe: What’s been most difficult about your transition from the Stanislavsky to the Bolshoi?
Sergei Filin: The feeling that I was abandoning people who had worked so hard for me. But the Bolshoi is my home.

PT: What lies ahead for you in the next few months?
SF: My first season will be tough, because no one can tell what surprises await us when we move back to the old stage. The main goal will be to transfer our large-scale ballets there quickly. But we’re lucky that, alongside the “old” stage, we’re able to keep the new, smaller stage we perform on at the moment, so from next year on I want to have workshops and new works staged there. (…)

» Read the full interview in Pointe Magazine’s news section (scroll down to see it)

Sergei Filin and John Neumeier in rehearsal with the Stanislavsky Ballet © Stanislavsky Music Theatre