Pavel dmitrichenko tsiskaridze wife

On the evening of Feb. 6, the Russian ballerina Anzhelina Vorontsova had to take another trip abroad — this time to Italy — for some performances she wished she had been able to decline. Winsome as a porcelain doll and sublime on the stage, the 21-year-old had little desire to take time away from her work at the Bolshoi Ballet, the legendary Moscow company where she has been a soloist since 2009.

But her Bolshoi salary is “miserly,” she says, and moonlighting abroad is her only way to make a decent living. “They don’t let me dance here,” she told me that day during a Bolshoi rehearsal, which she was squeezing in before the flight.

“You have no idea how long I’ve been asking to dance Swan Lake, and they refuse.”

It is a gripe that comes up endlessly among the troupe, usually aimed at the theater’s artistic director, Sergei Filin, who has the final say in handing out the leading roles.

It even came up as one of the possible motive