Anna Plisetskaya: the last representative of the dynasty

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

The glory of the servants of Terpsichore (the goddess of dance), unlike the great musicians, painters or poets, does not survive the creative age for long, unfortunately. The best famous dancers can be judged by the townsfolk mainly by a few images, memoirs of their contemporaries, and a little later - by photographs. And only in recent years has an amazing opportunity to capture the dance on film. Anna Plisetskaya is a young representative of the Plisetsky-Messerer dynasty. Little fame came to her as a child, when she played Jane Banks in a film about the extraordinary nanny Mary Poppins.

Childhood

Little Anna Plisetskaya was born in the capital of the Soviet Union - in Moscow - on August 18, 1971. Anya's mother, Marianna Sedova, was a ballerina of the Bolshoi Theater, father, Alexander Plisetsky (brother of Maya Plisetskaya), was a choreographer. There is a family legend that Maya Plisetskaya herself, her great aunt, came up with the girl's name. Just at that time, her husband, Rodion Shchedrin, was completing work on Anna Karenina. Here the ballerina came to her brother's familywith the suggestion of that name. Parents were not opposed.

The family moved to Latin America, so Anya spent her childhood there, in Lima. Her father founded the ballet there.

The debut in the cinema of little Anechka took place when she was three years old. She played a tiny bit part in the film "Anna Karenina" (directed by Margarita Pilikhina).

City on the Neva

She appeared again on the screens in the movie Goodbye Mary Poppins. She was chosen to play the daughter of the Banks couple, Jane Banks. It was 1984.

Today, Anna Plisetskaya talks about moving to the northern city of Leningrad with ease and gratitude. She understands that this was her lucky ticket to the future. But at the age of nine, it was a tragedy for her. Then she cried burning tears, sincerely not understanding why, at the mention of her last name, the leadership of the choreographic school starts to worry too much.

Lady Mary…

In Vaganovsky, a promising girl was greeted quite cordially. And already a couple of years later, when she turned into an excellent student and became a promising ballerina, they calmly let her go to the capital for the holidays, to shoot a picture about the unusual nanny Mary.

Thirty years have passed since the release of the film. But Anna Plisetskaya still remembers this time with a special feeling. On the set, she happened to see how famous Soviet actors play, having been nourished by the magical power of art from them.

She was invited to audition for the secondthe director of this film. Then Anna found out that before that they had looked at a huge number of children. By the way, many of them took part in the final scene of the picture. Before the nanny leaves for good, the adult characters in this story get a chance to reconnect with their childhood.

First Achievements

Anna Plisetskaya, whose biography is of interest to many connoisseurs of ballet, once recalled that she liked herself in this film. As she said in an interview, she was a good, right girl there. True, she did not manage to fully enjoy the glory that fell upon her after the release of the picture on the screens: she did not have a childhood, as such, the school had a rather busy schedule; The students got up at eight in the morning and went to bed at eleven at night. Yes, and her success was already constant, but on stage. By this time, Anna Plisetskaya was already dancing solo at the Mariinsky Theater. The schedule was quite tight, so there weren't many memories of filming the film.

Perhaps her luck was variable. And here it is not only the surname that is “to blame”. The peak of her career on stage came in the difficult 90s. The situation developed in such a way that she had to leave the Mariinsky Theater, although she really did not want to. There were very few performances now, and she was a young ballerina and really wanted to work. But here for a month she received an amount equal to the fee of a ballerina for one working day in the West. Almost all of her fellow students went abroad. But Anna wanted to dance in her homeland. And she began to earn extra money, independently organizing performances. Didn't like it very muchartistic director. He told her that Plisetskaya had no right to speak anywhere. I had to part with my native walls…

Yes, "retired at 36" sounds rather strange. But she tried herself in different guises. Plisetskaya plays in performances, works on a vocal program (she really likes to sing) and gives concerts. She has a dream - to act in films.

She has quite a strong ballet repertoire. She danced in "Russian", "Giselle", "Polovtsian Dances", "Swan Lake", "Sylphide" and many others. But he is not afraid to turn his eyes to other types of art. For three years, from 2000 to 2003, in a team with the collective of the Rossiya State Central Concert Hall, Plisetskaya, whose ballets have always been a small miracle, worked on creating a program that could embody the idea of developing gifted and professional children in various fields: in the field of opera, ballet, music and circus arts.

In recent years, she has been organizing concerts and working on staging performances.

Relationship with aunt

As a rule, in an interview, journalists often ask Anna a question about what kind of relationship she has with the great ballerina of the twentieth century, who is also the sister of her father, Maya Plisetskaya. But Anna never liked such interference in her family. She answered very simply: the relationship is exactly as close as possible for two people living in different countries. In addition, she never worked at the Bolshoi Theater, like an aunt, so there was never any competition or jealousy.

But there is one question that Anna Plisetskaya never answers. The personal life of the ballerina remains without a single comment from her. On the one hand, she does not consider herself a sufficiently stellar person who could be discussed non-stop, on the other, she is sure: this side of her life is only hers, and she does not intend to dedicate strangers to this world.