Russian ballerina Svetlana Adyrkhayeva

The leading Russian ballerina Svetlana Adyrkhayeva was born in 1938 in a small Northern Ossetian city of Khumalg. Svetlana Adyrkhayeva successfully finished Leningrad Choreographic School which later got renamed as the Russian Ballet Academy, in 1955. Her way to Bolshoi Ballet was not easy, she danced for several years on stages of Chelyabinsk and Odessa before she was invited to Bolshoi Theater in 1960.

This is when Svetlana got her chance to shine. She was soloist and leading ballerina until 1988. Adyrkhayeva got very complex dramatic roles and made them her own. But Adyrkhayeva not only danced, she also became a russian balletmaster in 1980. She taught classical dance at Choreographic Academy until she returned back to Bolshoi Theater where she currently works as a Balletmaster-Repetiteur.