The 19th New York International Fringe Festival, held on August 14-30, will host the world premiere of “To Dance” – a musical stage adaptation of the autobiography of Russian-Jewish dancer Valery Panov, who left the USSR to forge a career in the West. To mark the event, RBTH tells his story and remembers other Soviet dancers who took the decision to leave their country forever in search of a better life.
Valery Panov
Russian dancers Galina Panova and her husband Valery Panov are pictured during rehearsal with the Berlin Opera Ballet Production of "Cinderella" at the New York State Theater of the Lincoln Center for the performing arts, July 6, 1978. Source: AP
By the time of his emigration in 1974, Panov, aged 36 at the time, had been dancing for many years for Leningrad’s Kirov Ballet (now the Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg) and had starred in film adaptations of several ballet performances, including Swan Lake, The Sleeping Beauty and The Blue Bird. Nevertheless, once he started to fight for the right to emigrate to Israel (his real surname was Schulman), he instantly was banned from any performances – the Soviet authorities considered everyone who tried to leave the country for good a public enemy.
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