#Daria ionova

[elegantballetalk]

Today’s watch:

Character Dance exam from 2017

[balletomaneblog]

Which other dancers are you looking forward to being promoted at the Mariinsky?

Philipp Stepin completely deserves to be a Principal! I have literally no idea why he hasn't been promoted.

Anastasia Lukina really should be a First Soloist. She has the skill level, rep, and experience and has really gotten so much stronger in that past two or so years.

I also think Maxim Izmestiev should be a Second Soloist, he's really talented and has the rep for it by now as well. And I hope that Daria Ionova will start getting more opportunities/debuts so she can be made a Second Soloist too.

Finally, I'd love it if Svetlana Savelieva and Daria Ustyuzhanina were promoted to Coryphée. I also really like Anastasia Plotnikova and would be happy for her to be promoted.

[patricedumonde]

Hii!!!

Who are your top 10 dancers from bolshoi and top 10 dancers from Mariinsky (working right now)?

Omg 10 is too much, I'll give you five and I will specifically exclude prima ballerinas because they're basically given. And yeah, these are all going to be female dancers.

Mariinsky

Kristina Shapran

Alexandra Khiteyeva

Maria Ilyushkina

Renata Shakirova

Daria Ionova

Bolshoi

Margarita Shrayner

Anastasia Denisova

Arina Denisova

Xenia Zhiganshina

Sofia Valiullina

[tikitania]

the bronze horseman is based on the book (depicting the 1824 great flood in st petersburg and also some deeper literary meanings etc etc i'm not very literate tbh).

also if you go watch the recording that's on youtube, you'll see maria koshkareva, sofia valiullina and yaroslavna kuprina as three out of four of the children's roles - I think they're first-years in it :) im always so amazed to see current grads being small children in HD video on youtube, i'm not used to being older than professional ballet soloists lol

OMG! They are babies! I definitely saw Koshkaryova and Valiullina, but not sure if I could identify Kuprina. For a second, I thought I saw Olga Morgulets — the child (now adult) featured in the documentary about Vaganova aspirants along with Anna Sharova.

I did a quick scrub through the video — and I'm intrigued by this ballet, but was caught off guard by the man in blackface. Why??!??! Now I'm going go back and read more about this ballet, the literary references, etc. I did see that it was inspired by a Pushkin poem of the same name. Interestingly, it was revived for the Mariinsky stage by Yuri Smeklov, who is retiring in a couple of days. He also re-constructed Paquita, and I wonder if he will devote more of his time to restringing the classics for he Mariinsky or choreographing more contemporary projects, which he just did with Daria Ionova. Either way, I wish him luck!

[chanelb4-karl]

Daria Ionova

[mariepassionballet]

Daria Ionova - Mariinsky Ballet Company.

[ballet-symphonie]

VBA Asks

Hi Ale! I hope you can understand my question(s). Talking about the VBA 2018 class, how would you rank in your personal perception of "talent" Ionova, Bulanova, Khoreva, Petukhova and Nuikina based *only* on their graduation exams (not their lives in the theater etc)? And would you add other students to the list of most known/special students in that year? And how would rank them as well? I'm asking this because (first, I recognize Khoreva's talent), but in comparison, I don't understand how....

(Did I lose the second half of this ask?? I'm so sorry if I did, but this is all I have) This is a bit tricky because 'talent' is such a subjective thing. I'll keep the list to the 5 you mentioned, as those really were the clear standouts. In terms of natural disposition to ballet, I think I'd rank them as follows:

Khoreva- checks all the boxes, height, mobility, hyperextension, etc

Nuikina - a jump like that is from nature only

Bulanova - her not having a full education at VBA has left some holes in her technique, the feats she can pull of despite this are nothing short of remarkable.

Ionova - clearly a late bloomer, a bit short but with good natural coordination

Petukhova - a beautiful dancer, but ballet was clearly much much more of a battle for her than her classmates.

just random thought... i think yuri fateev favors maria koshkareva so much, even maria is just a student yuri is striving to get her to Mariinsky. when she compete for the moscow competition, fateev actually got an american choreographer to make the modern variation "maestro" for maria. and now maria getting all the lead roles in school, i mean she deserve it, she's very talented. i think some girls need to work on their confidence, dont let their nerves get them to fall apart.

Koshkareva is really good, but its more than that. She's the first graduate since Khoreva to look like she's ready at such a young age. The girl isn't messing around, some of her classmates could do with even a smidge of her confidence.

not to sound like vba wizard but, I think a paquita comeback is possible with underwater kingdom. but the lead role will be the top performing girl in kovaleva's class, you know who, they are gonna make her the star, with the other girl 2nd prize MBC, after all they are already mariinsky employed, the director promotes them. sofya V, might be princess masha for nutcracker, but she needs to work hard if she wanna shine. still early to tell things.

I would be all in for this programming, those underwater kingdom tutus are far too pretty (and likely expensive lol) to only be used once. I think the long-legged Kuprina would dance the Queen of the Waters Variation so well. I certainly expect Koshkareva to get the leading roles split with either Kuprina or Valuillina, depending on who looks stronger.

Hey! This is a really weird question but recently I've been watching recordings of older Vaganova ballet exams and of course the strongest students are in the center. I watched both Vishneva's and Zakharova's. It's so cool how two of the most famous ballerinas of their generation graduated just one year apart from each other.

So I was wondering your opinion, if Vishneva and Zakharova had actually been in the same class together, which do you think would have had the center position in the class, or been the favorite?

Ooh what a question! I often forget that they graduated only a year apart despite Vishneva being 3 years older. Zakharova was invited to VBA at 15 after winning 2nd prize at the Vaganova Prix and was allowed to skip not one but two grades into the graduating class.

I think the answer to your question depends on who's teaching the class. If its L.V. Kovaleva, there's no way Vishenva is taken out of the middle. Diana is her golden child and still is today. If the teacher is E.V. Evteeva, I think it could go either way. However, as incredibly gifted as Zakharova is, I don't really associate her as VBA's product, she only studied there for a year. Numerous talents such as Tsiskaridze, Grigorovich, and even Semionova, have described Zakharova's talent and style as utterly distinct from any real school. I personally feel that more credit should be given to Zakharova's teacher in Kiev, Valeria Sulegina. I think it would be hard to take the position away from Vishenva, who spent her whole life battling at the academy.

Hi Ale! I recently stumbled upon your blog and now I can't stay away! :D Maybe this is just my opinion, but it seems to me that in recent years the Vaganova boys have gotten... weaker? They don't seem to be as strong as the graduates of past years. How do you think this will affect their chances of making it into a companies like Mariinsky and Bolshoi?

Ahhh oof, the state of the VBA boys is not great IMO. They are graduating fewer competent boys each year. I think there are a variety of causes, including an outdated and ineffective training curriculum, a lot of the historically successful pedagogues no longer working, greater competition from other schools, and a smaller talent pool.

Prior to the war, I would have said yes, this will negatively affect their chances. Both BT and MT have repeatedly shown their willingness to hire and promote both foreign and foreign-trained talent, think of names like Victor Caxieta, Nikita Korneyev, Jacopo Tissi, David Motta Soares, etc. However, I can't imagine any graduate from a major ballet school is itching to go to Russia any time soon, the talent pool for Russian companies to pull from has unquestionably shrank.

However, we can still see the effect of the decline in a variety of other ways. For example, of the 8 boys taken into MT this fall, half were from the school of Boris Eifman, not VBA. VBA's insistence on poaching boys from the theatre to dance leading roles in their academy shows also doesn't help the problem. The decline isn't super obvious now, but wait 5 or so years when the current premiers start to retire...

[miss-mollys-ballet-blog]

Daria Ionova, Maria Iliushkina, and Nikita Korneyev in Chopiniana.

[whateverbringsyouthroughthenight]

Daria Ionova 

via peter-tschirky

[beautyballet]

[galina-ulanova]

Xander Parish, Maria Khoreva, Daria Ionova [hidden] and Anastasia Nuikina [hidden] in Apollo (Mariinsky Ballet, 2018)

[melmothblog]

Vaganova Ballet Academy graduate (class of Professor Lyudmila Kovaleva, 2018) and Mariinsky dancer, Daria Ionova, photographed by Darian Volkova.

[balletomaneblog]

About your recent ask, I'm so rooting for Daria Ionova too! Since she graduated, I never understood why she got behind from the girls her year. She is so musical, has great acting, beautiful lines and amazing port de bras! I don't know if I'm overly reacting to this, but in my opinion, she would be a great Giselle, Aurora, Masha, Juliet, Nikiya, Maria from The Fountain of Bakhchsarai, and even Odette. It's crazy that she never performed Masha in The Nutcracker! And I can only imagine how great she would be in the Kingdom of Shades. I just wished the theater would invest more in her and other dancers who are good and can improve with the right opportunities.

Right now, the MT divides itself in four types of dancers: the favorites who get all the opportunities, even when not deserved; the principals that have the least performances; the reliable ones they don't promote, but they work like crazy; and those who rarely get an opportunity and when they do, they get stuck in dancing the same role over and over, or being in the corps. Anyways, sorry about the rant lol.

Never apologize for ranting to me lol !!! Especially about Daria Ionova, as I adore her!

We know Daria got unlucky with the group that she graduated with. 2018 was an insane year for female Vaganova graduates (Khoreva, Bulanova, Nuikina, Ionova, Lendvai, Voroshilova, etc). But Daria can more than hold her own so I don't think this is entirely the problem. She debuted some of her larger roles like Gulnare right before COVID, which meant she was slowed down just as she was getting momentum, and then an injury had her out for much of last season as well.

Thankfully she's been back for awhile and she's had some debuts this season as Shyrin's Friends in Legend of Love and in the Almeh pas de trois and the Pas d'Action trio in La Fille du Pharaon. However, it frustrates me to no end that these are all smaller debuts. Out of the roles you listed I would especially love to see her as Maria in Bakhchisarai and as Giselle! And I've said before she would be a perfect Sylphide and I'd also love to see her as Le Papillon in Carnaval. Not to mention that she's always cast as First Odalisque even with Gulnare in her rep. I wish she'd get another shot at that role too.

I'm always wishing for more roles for Daria and am hoping that she finishes this season with some more debuts!

To your other points, I completely agree with you. I love following the Mariinsky and at the same time the management sometimes makes me want to hit my head against the wall. There's so many talented dancers and so few who get a real shot. I especially resonated with what you said about the "reliable ones they don't promote, but they work like crazy" and will take this as my opportunity to rant about Osmolkina who more than fits this description. In any other company she would have been promoted to principal ages ago! She dances almost everything, has amazing technique, beautiful acting skills, and brings a unique presence to the theatre. And while she dances exclusively principal roles and has a larger workload than most of the principal dancers, she was never promoted and almost definitely won't be now that she's at the very end of her career. And of course there are plenty of lower ranking dancers who have it even worse.

Anyways . . . feel free to rant on my blog anytime! And it's always good to know that there's someone else out there wishing for more opportunities for Dasha!

[peter-tschirky]

Daria Ionova

[tikitania]

AANND… she's off the playbill. Replaced by Daria Ionova. Oh, well…one can dream. I was hoping to see her back in the theatre! She’s back!!! Olesya Novikova is back on the playbill! I find it really interesting that Konovalov is her partner. He’s been featured a lot lately and I wonder if he’s the next male dancer to be promoted? 🤔

[balletroyale]

who are your favorite young dancers?

ALEXANDRA TRIKOZ ALEXANDRA TRIKOZ ALEXANDRA TRIKOZ 

I also like Khiteeva and honestly? Daria Ionova.