Bolshoi Babylon Review: A visceral look inside the famous ballet company

In 2013, Nick Read and his co-director Mark Franchetti were granted unprecedented access to the Bolshoi ballet company. In the wake of an acid attack on the company’s artistic director, Sergei Filin, by a jealous rival dancer, what could possibly count as bad PR? Many of the dancers interviewed describe how the public turned on them, calling them “evil” and “snakes in a bottle”.

As the crew shoots, there’s a criminal trial and a second trial within the Bolshoi itself. The ballerina Maria Alexandrova notes that, given Russia’s distrust of management, that Filin was doomed the moment he was promoted from dancer to the Dark Side. There are rumblings and grumblings about casting. There are many damning remarks about the life of a dancer: overworked, underpaid and brutally short.

“The world of theatre is cruel,” notes ballet master Boris Akimov, “It looks beautiful from the outside, but inside it's boiling.”

Still, we do hear many tantalising things – “Dancers live more in the theatre than in the world: here they love and hate, marry and divorce”; “Something has changed” – without nearly enough elaboration. We’re presented with ripe political analogies – “If the Bolshoi is sick, it’s because Russia is sick too” – and a parade of former visitors (Stalin, Nixon, Thatcher, Reagan) to underscore the Bolshoi’s cultural importance.

The arrival of Vladimir Urin, the former general manager of the Stanislavsky Theatre – as parachuted in by Putin – promises a battle royale. In the end, Urin is far too clever and considered to make a spectacle. That is left to the dancers after much soul-searching and whispering in the wings.

It’s not perhaps the handbags-and-hair-pulling exposé we were hoping for, but it looks splendid, and the contributors, including Russian Premier Dimitry Medvedev, are often as interesting for what they don’t say as what they do.