It’s a day with an English feel – 20 degrees, a bit of sunshine, a drizzle – but my surroundings are anything but. I’m with Nina Ananiashvili, ballet star and now director of the company, in her office in the extravagant neo-Moorish Opera House in Tbilisi, and we’re talking about the Georgian State Ballet’s first visit to England.
“Do you see Mother of Georgia?” says Ananiashvili, referring to the massive 1958 monument that overlooks the capital from Sololaki Hill. “She has wine in one hand and a sword in the other. So we always say: welcome to our country, with wine, everyone who comes in friendship. But if you come against us, we will fight for our country. It’s in our genes. So many Russians come here and we don’t have any problems with it – as long as they behave.”
My visit to Tbilisi bears out her words. Georgia—the world’s oldest wine-producing nation, on the eastern tip of the Black Sea—has not only its own language, but also its own script, culture and cuisine. The hilly capital has its own architecture—a unique fusion of diverse styles—a stunning natural waterfall and rapids in the center.
Every Georgian I meet – including Ananiashvili – is charming. Yet there is fierce anti-Russian graffiti everywhere, as well as daily, international, headline-grabbing protests on the streets against possible Kremlin interference in the country’s politics. Adding fuel to the fire, Russia continues to occupy two separate northern regions of Georgia following the 2008 Russo-Georgian war.
Ananiashvili (61, her first name is Nino in Georgian) has long had emotional ties to both countries. Born in Georgia in 1963, she is one of the most celebrated prima ballerinas of the 20th century. In Georgia, she is also something of a national hero.
“I always say that I am Georgian. It doesn’t matter where I danced, I am born Georgian, I am Georgian, I die Georgian. And I am proud of that. I was proud because if you read my newspaper articles all over the world, they always said that Nina Ananiashvili looks different from other ballerinas of the Bolshoi. So all my life I was proud to be a child of my country.”
But the most enduring and formative part of her training took place in Moscow. It was during her 20-plus years as a star of the Bolshoi, from 1981-2004 (alongside stellar positions with American Ballet Theatre and then Houston Ballet) that she made her name as a dancer of rare dynamism, versatility and dramatic power, as exhilarating as Juliet or Giselle as she was stylish in the coolly abstract works of Balanchine.
“Right now we have a nervous situation here,” she says. “But I can say in general that I am a Bolshoi ballerina – I was ‘born’ as a ballerina in the Bolshoi. My coach, my teacher, they were the people who ‘raised’ me – I mean, raised me as a ballerina.”
Are her loyalties divided? A proud Georgian who is also a proud ex-Bolshoi member?
“This is my life!” she says. “I bring what I learned there with me here – but that doesn’t mean I like what’s happening.”
We will soon see for ourselves what this remarkable, deeply sympathetic force of nature has brought to the 175-year-old company in the 20 years since then Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili invited her to lead and revitalize it. Under communism it made Tbilisi (along with Moscow, St. Petersburg and Kiev) one of the most important centres for ballet in the USSR, but has since fallen into disrepair.
For 11 days in August and September, the State Ballet of Georgia will perform Swan Lake at the London Coliseum. With the Bolshoi and the Mariinsky – both former regulars in London – persona non grata in the West, there is a void begging to be filled. And judging by the lavishly theatrical production of Sleeping Beauty I saw in Tbilisi, the omens are good.
Although the staging, as Ananiashvili suggests, is stylistically and choreographically influenced by her time at the Bolshoi, there is one crucial difference: brevity. First, where the famous 1895 version of Tchaikovsky’s ballet is almost always danced with two intervals, this production has only one: “We do the first and second acts together, then the third and fourth together.” Furthermore, Ananiashvili and her former dance partner (now creative) Alexei Fadeyechev have also pruned the ballet itself, meaning that their production runs from the usual three hours to a more digestible two hours and fifteen minutes.
Why was compression necessary? Ananiashvili recalls the times when she herself was in the Bolshoi audience and says: “I remember that everyone left after they had seen the Black Swan pas de deux [in Act III] – nobody wanted to see the fourth part, because it is so boring and long.
“Even in Georgia – where we love classical ballet – the audience is different these days. We’re all rushing, like the clock is going faster. And if we let the audience sit for hours, we lose them. So we think, how can we make this so that we don’t spoil anything, and when you watch, you don’t miss anything?”
The leading roles in London are played by solo artist Laura Fernandez (26, half Ukrainian, half Spanish, but born in Switzerland) and soloist Filippo Montanari (22, from a small town near Rimini in northeastern Italy).
They are smart, beautiful, and both speak excellent English. They both have a deep admiration and affection for their leader.
“With some directors,” Montanari says, “you get the sense that they’re some horrible entity — not even as a person, just as your director. But with Nina, you understand that she was born not only to be a great ballerina, but also to be a great teacher.
“You can’t assume that these two things go together – she’s unique.”
“I also love my previous director,” Fernandez says tactfully, “but this one, I feel like she’s my second mother here. She takes care of me, she helps me in my personal life too – it’s not just ballet, so I get a lot of support from her.”
Fernandez needed pastoral care. Previously a principal at Moscow’s Stanislavsky Theatre, she quickly found her life there untenable after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2020. Drawn by Ananiashvili’s reputation as a creative force, she decided to give Tbilisi a try.
“The war made it difficult for me [in Moscow] at that time because I had relatives in Mariupol in Ukraine,” she says. “People were telling me how it would end soon – ‘Just four more days and it will be over.’ And it didn’t end. Then somehow my relatives started disappearing for a few days – we had no contact, because the connection was so bad – so we didn’t know if they were alive or not.”
It must have been terrifying. “Yeah, especially because I have a cousin who really looks like my brother. He doesn’t have a mother, so my mother kind of took care of him.”
Fernandez and Montanari are both thrilled to be dancing in London, and Ananiashvili is equally excited about returning to the city where she once performed as a guest artist with the Royal Ballet.
“I was so sad that I never came back to the Royal Ballet after [starring in The Firebird in] “1993,” says Ananiashvili, adding with a twinkle in her eye: “But I think they were jealous because I went to the United States.”
“Now I am happy to introduce a new generation of dancers to London. It is the first time for this company and I am careful what I say because performing in London is not easy. I know this: the audience is knowledgeable and they have these magical companies there, and also many modern companies.”
And horrible people like me with notepads? She roars with laughter and squeezes my hand warmly. “Let’s go to lunch!”
The State Ballet of Georgia performs ‘Swan Lake’ at the London Coliseum, WC2, from August 28 through September 8. Tickets: londoncoliseum.org