MOSCOW, May 19. /TASS/. Renowned Russian choreographer Yuri Grigorovich has died at the age of 98, his aide, Alexander Kolesnikov, told TASS.
"Yuri Grigorovich has passed away. He was 98," he said.
Yuri Grigorovich was born on January 2, 1927 in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg). After graduating from a ballet school in Leningrad, he joined the ballet company of the Kirov Academic Theater of Opera and Ballet (now Mariinsky Theater), where he served as a ballet dancer until 1961 and then as a choreographer, winning world-wide fame.
From 1964 to 1996, he was chief ballet master and, from 2008, choreographer at Moscow’s Bolshoi Theater. Grigorovich’s productions at the Bolshoi included The Stone Flower, Legend of Love, Nutcracker, Spartacus, Ivan the Terrible, Angara, Romeo and Juliet, Golden Age. He also choreographed new versions of classical ballets, which have been staged at the Bolshoi for half a century.
Grigorovich was named People’s Artist of the Soviet Union in 1973 and was awarded the title of Hero of Socialist Labor in 1986. He received the Order of St Andrew the Apostle the First-Called in 2017 and is the full cavalier of the Order for Merits to the Fatherland (2011, 2007, 2002) and recipient of more than 60 other Russian and foreign awards.