Ratmansky, Alexei Osipovich

Ratmansky, Alexei Osipovich, 1968–, Russian ballet dancer and choreographer. He studied with the Bolshoi Ballet school (1978–86), then danced with the Kiev Ballet; he later danced with the Royal Winnipeg Ballet (1992–95) and the Royal Danish Ballet (1997–2003), where he was a principal dancer and began to choreograph. In 2004 he became the Bolshoi's artistic director. There he introduced new ballets by Russian choreographers and a number of works from the West, e.g., by Twyla Tharp, and revived and rechoreographed several 1930s Soviet ballets, the best known of which is The Bright Stream (2003). In 2009 he joined the American Ballet Theatre as artist-in-residence. Ratmansky is known for his extreme musicality, his use of the classical vocabulary of steps and movements, his revival of story ballet, and his creation of a renewed modernist ballet. His recent dances include Russian Seasons (2007), Concerto DSCH (2008), Dumbarton (2011), Pictures at an Exhibition (2014), Serenade after Plato's Symposium (2016), Whipped Cream (2017), and Voices (2020), set to piano and recorded voices. His reconstructions of classical 19th-century ballets include Sleeping Beauty (2015), Swan Lake (2016), La Bayadère (2018), and Giselle (2019).

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