During these years the Imperial Theater of St. Petersburgwas renamed the Ballet. Kirov (now the Mariinsky Theater), and the artistic director of this theater was the honored ballerina Agrippina Vaganova - student Petipa and Chekketi. She was forced to transform the subject lines, subordinating them to Soviet ideological principles. So, for example, the ending of the ballet "Swan Lake" was changed from the tragic to the sublime. And the Imperial Ballet School became known as the Leningrad State Choreographic Institute. The future stars of the Soviet ballet were trained here. After the death of an outstanding ballerina in 1957, this school was renamed the Academy of Russian Ballet named after Agrippina Vaganova. So it is called to this day. The most popular ballet theaters of the country were the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow and the Theater. Kirov (Mariinsky Theater) in Leningrad. The repertoire of the theaters included works by both foreign and Russian and Soviet composers. Especially popular were the works of Prokofiev: ballets "Cinderella" and "Romeo and Juliet", etc. The ballet did not stop acting during the Patriotic War. However, he reached his heyday in the middle of the century. Hungry for cultural events during the war, Soviet people flooded the theater halls, and each new play was sold out. The figures of the ballet enjoyed great popularity. In those years, new stars of the Soviet ballet appeared: Tatiana Zimina, Maya Plisetskaya, Yuri Grigorovich, Maris Liepa, Mahmoud Esambaev, Raisa Struchkova, Boris Bregvadze, Vera Dubrovina, Inna Zubkovskaya, Askold Makarov, Tamara Seifert, Nadezhda Nadezhdina, Vera Orlova, Violetta Bovt and etc.
Subsequent years the Soviet ballet became a visitingcard of the USSR. The troupes of the Bolshoi and Kirov theaters have toured extensively all over the world, even leaving behind the iron curtain. Some stars of the Soviet ballet, finding themselves "behind the hill" and weighing all the pros and cons, decided to stay there and asked for political asylum. They were considered traitors in their homeland, and they wrote about the famous "defectors" in the media. Alexander Godunov, Natalia Markova, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Valery Panov, Rudolf Nuriyev - they all had great success and were in demand at the ballet stages of the most prestigious theaters of the world. However, the greatest popularity in the world was won by the Soviet ballet dancer Great Rudolf Nuriyev. He became a legend in the history of world culture. Since 1961, he has not returned from the Parisian tour and became premier at Covent Garden, and since the 1980s he became the head of the Grand Opera in Paris.
Today the Russian ballet does not lose itspopularity, and grown up by Soviet choreographers, young artists are in demand all over the world. Russian figures of ballet art in the 21st century are free in their actions. They can freely conclude contracts and perform at foreign theater stages and with their brilliant performances prove to everyone and everything that Russian ballet is the best in the whole world.
