Celebrating the Legacy of Ludmila Brzhozovskaya: A Belarusian Ballet Icon at 75

In the 1960s, Ludmila Brzhozovskaya graced the stage of the Belarusian Bolshoi Theatre, captivating audiences with her talent and ethereal beauty until the late 1980s. Her performances inspired artists, poets, journalists, critics, and, most importantly, the spectators who still cherish the memories of her enchanting acts.

The Genesis of a Dream

Born into the family of a renowned Belarusian artist, Ludmila Brzhozovskaya’s story begins with her parents, Genrikh Brzhozovsky and Tatyana Savich. Genrikh, a graduate of the Vitebsk Art College, and Tatyana, a student at the Minsk Medical College, met in the 1930s and later fought together in a partisan detachment during World War II. After the war, they welcomed two daughters into their lives.

Genrikh Brzhozovsky was a kind and refined man with a deep love for nature, which he beautifully captured in his landscape paintings. Tatyana, despite being a doctor by profession, had harbored dreams of ballet before the war. The family resided in a two-story house on Storozhevskaya Street, near the Opera and Ballet Theatre, where Genrikh had his studio. Their neighbors included prominent artists such as Konstantin Mikhailovich Kosmachev and Anatoly Demyanovich Shibnev. Ludmila and her sister often visited their studios, admiring the artworks and nurturing their own dreams. They would even stage performances in their courtyard, creating their own little “theater.”

Years of Training

Next to their home stood the real theater, which also housed the choreographic school where young Brzhozovskaya would later enroll. Her first teacher was Valentina Dudko, who had come to Minsk from Petersburg. In her second year, Ludmila began studying under the legendary Nina Mlodzinskaya. “In her youth, Nina Fedorovna was a student of Agrippina Vaganova and sat at the same desk as George Balanchivadze (George Balanchine),” Ludmila recalls. Mlodzinskaya, considered one of the most beautiful women in Petersburg, even appeared in the film “The Decembrists.” When the war began, she moved to Sverdlovsk and later to Minsk, where the theater troupe was being formed after the war.

Nina Fedorovna instilled in us a refined sense of music and dance, the rhythm of movement, and laid the poetic foundation within us. She was a devout person, as was her mother. She was the first to open my eyes to the beauty of nature, often saying that all beauty should be drawn from nature itself. She had a knack for working with children. I am endlessly grateful to her.

Later, I met Irina Nikolaevna Savelieva. She too graduated from the Vaganova Academy. Irina Nikolaevna provided us with an excellent education. She herself danced on the theater stage, and I remember her first performance as Aurora, how nervous she was, and how magnificently she performed the part.

Theatrical Debut

Ludmila graduated from the Minsk Choreographic School and joined the theater in 1966. At that time, the Belarusian Bolshoi was experiencing a generational shift, with the stars of ballet who had founded the Opera and Ballet Theatre in Minsk or joined it right after the war either leaving the stage or concluding their careers. “In those years, the theater had many interesting and diverse ballerinas: Alevtina Korzenkova, Nina Davydenko, Klara Malysheva, Lidia Ryazhenova, Basya Karpilova,” Brzhozovskaya recalls. “There was much to learn from them—each was an individual. Semen Drechin and Alexandra Nikolaeva made a magnificent pair. I remember Drechin from school; he amazed me in “Le Corsaire”—he was fantastically beautiful as Conrad. I also met Alexandra Nikolaeva at the choreographic school—she staged “Dance of the Amours,” where I danced my first solo in my life.

The first performance in which Ludmila Brzhozovskaya participated was the premiere ballet “Peer Gynt,” staged by Otar Dadishkiliani. The recent graduate performed the lead role in this production. “It was a complex, dramatic, but interesting role,” the ballerina recalls, “where the artist had to portray both a young girl and an old woman—Solveig, who waited her entire life for her Peer.

I worked for three years—I also danced in “Swan Lake,” “Romeo and Juliet,” and then Yuri Trojan came to the theater after school. His debut was the lead role in “The Chosen One” by Evgeny Glebow, followed by Romeo, and then we went to intern in Leningrad at the Kirov Theater.

St. Petersburg and Moscow Ballet Schools

At the Kirov (now Mariinsky) Theater, the young ballerina studied under the People’s Artist of the USSR, Natalia Dudinskaya (a student of Vaganova), while Yuri Trojan studied under Alexander Ivanovich Pushkin (the teacher of Mikhail Baryshnikov and Rudolf Nureyev).

The class that Dudinskaya gave was very challenging. I spent a whole month getting used to the bar exercises and the incredibly complex stance. At that time, many famous ballerinas were interning at the Kirov Theater in Leningrad, such as Malika Sabirova, Eva Evdokimova, and Gabriela Komleva was at her peak. Natalia Makarova stood at the bar in front of me. Yuri Trojan and I performed “Swan Lake,” which was rehearsed with Natalia Dudinskaya and Konstantin Sergeyev, on the stage of the Kirov Theater.

We were there for only four months, but being present at the rehearsals and hearing the comments that Dudinskaya made while working with Komleva on “La Bayadère,” or attending the rehearsals of “The Sleeping Beauty” with Irina Kolpakova—this was a tremendous education. We did not yet fully understand everything, but we tried to absorb it all. I loved to admire and fall in love with the ballerina, to see that wonderful generation of Vaganova’s students and understand that each of them was a little diamond.

The Ballet “Tristan and Isolde”

A ballerina is polished like a diamond—the more performances she dances under different ballet masters and choreographers, the more modern and classical pieces she performs, the more perfect the dancer becomes. At that time, many Western dancers came to the Belarusian theater—pairs from Sweden, France, and England performed almost every three months.

We could go to performances in various theaters around the country. The tickets were cheap—for the Bolshoi, for the Kirov. There I first saw Natalia Bessmertnova in “Giselle,” who amazed me, and Ludmila Semenyaka in “The Sleeping Beauty” and “Swan Lake.”

When dancing my parts, I did not use emotions from life; rather, I used admiration for the ballerina—for example, Galina Ulanova. She created a magnificent image of Giselle; I have not seen a better, more truthful, braver, or more interesting one. I saw the second act performed by many amazing ballerinas—for example, the Cuban Alicia Alonso, the Frenchwoman Claire Motte, and her partner Attilio Labis. I adored Maya Plisetskaya. I was at her rehearsals and performances. Her “Raymonda” is magnificent, her hands in “Swan Lake,” her jumps in “The Fountain of Bakhchisarai,” in “Don Quixote”—this is passion, this is strength, this is power…

The Ballet “Spartacus”

In the early years of her work at the theater, Brzhozovskaya also met ballet masters Nina Stukolkina and Alexei Andreev. They staged “Raymonda” and other performances in Minsk. Ludmila recalls: “Nina Stukolkina rehearsed with me for “Swan Lake,” “The Fountain of Bakhchisarai,” “Don Quixote,” “Walpurgis Night,” and gave me a lot because she was both a magnificent stage master and a wonderful ballet master. With Andreev, we went abroad for the first time. I danced “Swan Lake” and “Spartacus” in Dadishkiliani’s production in Finland. Five people went—Trojan and I, Klara Malysheva with Evgeny Pavlovich, and Mikhail Grishchenko.