Wissenswertes

World famous Soviet ballerina.

After retiring from dancing, she became a choreographer and gave master classes around the world.

She joined the Bolshoi in 1943, and became prima ballerina in 1960.

Among her acclaimed roles were Odette/Odile in "Swan Lake", Aurora in "The Sleeping Beauty" and Carmen in "Carmen Suite".

Her mother was a silent-film actress and her father an engineer who was posted to Spitzbergen, Norway. She spent part of her childhood there. Her father was arrested in 1937 and shot in 1938, a victim of Stalin's purges. Her mother was sent to a labor cap with her infant son, then exiled to Kazakhstan.

Sister of choreographer Azari Plisetsky, cousin of Boris Messerer.

Director of Spanish National Ballet 1988-1990.

Dated Warren Beatty.

Received the Order "For Merit to the Fatherland" for her loyalty to Russia as she refused to defect from the Soviet Union and stayed loyal to her native country unlike a lot of Russians, especially ballet dancers.

She was named "Prima Ballerina Assolutta" in her own native homeland of Russia right before Natalia Makarova was.

She remarked that it took her a long time to get "I, Maya Plisetskaya" written and published as she did all by herself without a co-author.