The ballet traditions of St. Petersburg are already three centuries old, and the city has much to be proud of in this regard. Especially the names of dancers and the Kirov Theater prim. In the second half of the twentieth century, one of the brightest stars in it was the ballerina Valentina Ganibalova. She danced almost all the main parts of the theater repertoire. In March 2018, Valentina Mikhailovna turned seventy years old. How was her career in ballet and what is she doing now?
Childhood and youth
Valentina Ganibalova was born on March 7, 1948 in Tashkent, where her mother, a native of the village of Tovarkovo, near Moscow, was evacuated during the war. As a child, Valya loved to dance, and her mother took her to an Uzbek choreographic school.
In April 1966, when the girl was in graduation class, a devastating earthquake occurred in Tashkent. Then, people from all over the Soviet Union gathered to restore the city, and they suggested that the local opera and ballet theater go on tour to Leningrad. The graduation class of the choreographic school was also attracted to the trip. So Valentina Ganibalova first appeared in the city on the Neva.
Studying at the Vaganov School
In Leningrad, the talent of a young dancer did not go unnoticed - the Soviet ballerina Natalya Dudinskaya drew attention to the girl. She invited Valentina to the improvement class, which she led in the Vaganovsky school.
The training lasted a year, and this time Ganibalova recalls as the most hungry and coldest in life. Mom, who remained in Uzbekistan, could not help her daughter financially, and the nineteen-year-old ballerina had nothing to buy winter clothes for. At the boarding school she was given a coat on batting, and teacher Natalya Dudinskaya presented her winter boots.
Nevertheless, in 1967, Valentina Ganibalova successfully passed the improvement class and was admitted to the Kirovsky (now Mariinsky) Theater.
Takeoff
After enrolling in the troupe, the ballerina immediately gave several major parties in classical ballets. Gogi Aleksidze, the famous Georgian choreographer, introduced her to the play “Scythian Suite”. Then there was a leading party in Oleg Vinogradov’s ballet “Goryanka”. Valentina Ganibalova was originally supposed to dance in the corps de ballet, but due to the illness of the main artists, she was staged as a soloist. The ballerina coped with the task phenomenally.
Over the years of work at the Kirov Theater, Valentina Mikhailovna danced almost all of the “classics”: she was given the main parts in Don Quixote, The Legend of Love, La Bayadere, Bakhchisarai Fountain, Corsair, Stone Flower, and Spartacus ”and, of course,“ Giselle ”.
Success abroad
In 1972, the troupe went on tour to Spain, and Ganibalova was entrusted with opening the performance by the Odette-Odile party from Swan Lake. I must say that the directors took a certain risk, instructing the young artist to go on stage first. However, the ballerina danced triumphantly and really liked the local audience. After the performance, the Spanish newspapers called it the "night star."
"Black Mark"
The success of Valentina Ganibalova, not everyone was happy. The authorities and the administration of the theater considered that the ballerina behaved too freely abroad. In those years, such famous ballet dancers as Natalya Makarova and Rudolf Nureyev emigrated from Russia, and, fearing that Ganibalova might do the same, she was made restricted to travel abroad.
Prior to perestroika, Valentina Mikhailovna was not allowed to go abroad. For this reason, the leading parties stopped giving her in the theater, because then the foreign press would have wondered why the main soloist does not go on tour. So a career was stolen from a virtuoso ballerina, and the world really could not recognize the Russian star of the scene.
"Blue bird"
An outlet for Valentina Ganibalova at this difficult time was participation in the Soviet-American film. In 1976, director D. Cucor began filming the musical fairy tale "The Blue Bird" based on the play by M. Meterlink, and the ballerina was offered the role of Water in it. Initially, this image was supposed to be embodied by Maya Plisetskaya, but for some reason she refused.
The film was attended by many American stars, including Elizabeth Taylor. The Queen of Hollywood, despite the language barrier, made friends with Valentina Mikhailovna. They had dinner together more than once, and at the end of filming, the actress even gave the ballerina a necklace.
Own ballet theater
Valentina Ganibalova left the Kirov stage in 1989, because over the past ten years she was practically not given any parts in the performances. The ballerina could not imagine her existence without creative activity, so she founded her own theater, in which she became both the artistic director and the artist.
Valentina Mikhailovna staged more than ten original performances, including Pyshka, Coppelia, White Nights, Carnival. She toured a lot with the theater troupe abroad: in the Scandinavian countries, Portugal, Spain, Panama, Croatia.
Currently
03/07/2018 Valentina Ganibalova celebrated her seventieth anniversary. According to the ballerina, she does not regret that her career in the theater ended so early. Valentina Mikhailovna made up for her creative dissatisfaction with recitals and tours, as well as work with talented choreographers.
For the anniversary, the artist was offered to make an exhibition of photographs in the gallery of K. Bulla on Nevsky Prospect. March 16, it was open to all comers. Visitors who came with interest examined the photos of the ballerina Valentina Ganibalova made over all the years of her stage career.
In the summer of 2018, the children's joy contest “The Joy of Discovery” was held in the Pushkin Mountains, which Valentina Mikhailovna organized in memory of her husband Savely Yamshchikov. Thus, the artist’s creative life continues.