Banana tycoon shakes up Russian ballet
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian aristocrat Vladimir Kekhman done a happening offering bananas.
Now he has a new idea in life: ballet.
Using a kind of business savvy honed from a decade during a helm of a country's largest fruit association he has staged a still manoeuvre d'etat in Russia's firmly weave dance universe this year, luring star dancers pided from Moscow's Bolshoi Theatre.
Many in a ballet universe were dumbfounded when Natalia Osipova and Ivan Vasiliev quit the Bolshoi final month to pointer with St. Petersburg's small famous Mikhailovsky Theatre.
Earlier this year, Kekhman alien Spanish choreographer Nacho Duato to turn a initial immigrant to lead a Russian ballet unit in a century during a Mikhailovsky.
In a new talk with Reuters, Kekhman pronounced he also had his eye on a Bolshoi's David Hallberg, one of a tip form acquisitions and a initial American principal dancer.
"We customarily get a dancers we want," pronounced Kekhman, who founded his Joint Fruit Company in 1997 and became ubiquitous executive of St Petersburg's Mikhailovsky Theatre in 2007.
"David Hallberg is no exception. Even yet he chose a Bolshoi when we offering him a position with us, we consider he can still dance (as a guest star) during a Mikhailovsky. There is a lot he can do here," he said.
The tip of attracting a ballet's large names, Kekhman says, is to recompense dancers for fasten a smaller entertainment with artistic leisure though also apartments and "decent" salaries.
Kekhman, 43, who went behind to propagandize and graduated from a St Petersburg State Academy of Theatrical Arts in 2009, has so distant invested $50 million into modernizing a Mikhailovsky.
"All of a principal dancers get a marketplace price. That's how we reason onto a best performers since many of them are prepared to scapegoat income for status of a Bolshoi," he said.
INVESTING IN PERFORMERS
The 19th-century Mikhailovsky Theatre is eclipsed in St. Petersburg by a improved famous Mariinsky Ballet.
But Kekhman pronounced his entertainment was not essay to be a world's tip ballet though to do something opposite and do it well.
"There are many theatres job themselves No. 1," Kekhman said, gazing frequently during mixed iPhones.
"My idea now is to make Mikhailovsky a world's No. 2 theatre."
He pronounced a entertainment does not follow costly entertainment sets or costumes, generally as Duato's complicated ballets mostly need minimalist entertainment and are mostly danced but pointes.
"The Bolshoi and a Mariinsky use their code names. They spend a ton of income on costly decorations, while we consider it is best to deposit in performers and choreographers," he said.
Running on a bill some 10 times smaller than a emblematic Moscow and St Petersburg theatres, a Mikhailovsky is hard-pressed to contest on normal presentation.
Last year, a entertainment perceived 358 million rubles ($11.5 million) in state subsidies, and warranted another 186 million from sheet sales.
Donations from Russian businesses, including Russian oil writer Rosneft, sum about 50 million rubles ($1.6 million), Kekhman said, insisting he frequency invests any of his personal income anymore.
For now, he pronounced he has no skeleton for after his agreement expires in 2013.
"Right now we am totally consumed with a Mikhailovsky," he said.
(Reporting by Nastassia Astrasheuskaya and Olga Sichkar; Editing by Alissa de Carbonnel)
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