Moscow (AFP) – Three years ago Bolshoi soloist Pavel Dmitrichenko swapped the limelight of the legendary theatre for prison after being convicted of ordering an acid attack that rocked the ballet world.
Released midway through a five-and-a-half-year sentence this summer for good behaviour, Dmitrichenko has resumed training at the Bolshoi and says he dreams of making a comeback on one of the world’s most celebrated stages.
“I have a goal: either I return to the Bolshoi or end my ballet career,” the 32-year-old dancer told AFP in an interview at a Moscow restaurant.
“I’ve already crossed the threshold. I’ve been training there for three months. You can say that I’ve returned to the Bolshoi,” he said, adding that his dressing room remained untouched during his three-year absence.
Dmitrichenko said that this summer he bumped into the Bolshoi’s new artistic director Makhar Vaziev who told him he saw “no problem” with him training at the theatre.
The Bolshoi confirmed to AFP that it had agreed to Dmitrichenko’s request to take part in morning training sessions.
“This doesn’t at all mean that Pavel Dmitrichenko will once again join the Bolshoi ballet troupe,” spokeswoman Katerina Novikova said, however.
Upon Dmitrichenko’s release, the Bolshoi general director Vladimir Urin, appointed after the attack, said the soloist could audition for a position at the theatre like any other dancer.
The dancer denies masterminding an acid attack on Bolshoi artistic director Sergei Filin that left him scarred and vision-impaired in January 2013.
In court, he said he agreed to a proposal by the convicted perpetrator, an unemployed ex-convict, to “hit” Filin but no more.
The assault, one of the most sensational scandals in the Bolshoi’s 240-year history, laid bare dark intrigues and tales of backstage rivalries.
– No villain –
The hollow-eyed Dmitrichenko, who joined the Bolshoi in 2002, was often cast as dark characters such as Ivan the Terrible and the Evil Genius in Swan Lake.
But off the stage, he insists he is no villain.
The judge hearing his case in 2013 found that Dmitrichenko had ordered the attack because he was upset with Filin’s management decisions.
According to the court, the soloist was upset that his ex-girlfriend, up-and-coming soloist Anzhelina Vorontsova, had been passed over for top roles.
Dmitrichenko, who married stylist Yana Fadeyeva while in prison, maintains that Vorontsova was not his girlfriend.
The dancer says the case against him was “completely fabricated” and he was charged “over nothing.”
Dmitrichenko said he has seen Filin, who still works at the Bolshoi in a less senior role, only once since his release. Their eyes met in a ballet rehearsal room but they did not speak.
“He is absolutely of no interest to me,” Dmitrichenko said. “Even more so today.”
In an awkward coincidence, the two men live in the same apartment building but Dmitrichenko said they haven’t run into each other.
– ‘My body is in shock’ –
Dmitrichenko says the three years he spent in a penal colony in Ryazan, a city some 180 kilometres (110 miles) southeast of Moscow, went by “like in a dream.”
Dmitrichenko lived in a barracks with some 100 inmates in what he called “terrible conditions.”
He served his term with a wide array characters including a regional deputy minister, teachers and university heads convicted of fraud.
“A Russian prison is like a public bath,” he said. “There are all sorts of people there.”
During night shifts at the prison workshop, he would stuff a grey kitten for company in the hood of his sheepskin coat and run to keep his legs sturdy.
He sometimes lifted weights but his improvised dumbbells were forbidden at the jail and eventually confiscated.
He says he never reflects on his time behind bars.
The only memento he kept from his years in prison is his former running partner, a cat named Yuki, Japanese for “happiness”.
Dmitrichenko said he has now regained 95 percent of his pre-prison form and expects to be back at full strength by the end of the year.
“For the past three years, my body was asleep,” he said.
“But now it has been awakened and forced to sprint the 100 metres. My body is in shock.”
Dmitrichenko recently danced in five charity performances of Swan Lake.
But he said he suffered a torn thigh muscle and painful joints and ligaments were forcing him to take painkillers.
Dmitrichenko said a number of European ballet companies have expressed interest in him since his release.
But the dancer vowed loyalty to the Bolshoi and praises its new leadership for improving the working atmosphere since the acid attack.
“Scandals are the best publicity,” he said with a smirk. “And I wasn’t the one who created this scandal.”
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