A piece from today's Corriere shares an interview with pretty pony ballerina Svetlana Zakharova, tonight starring in the premier of La bella addormentata nel bosco at Teatro alla Scala.
The twenty-eight-year-old Ukrainian-born dancer's father is a retired member of Red Army, which is pretty freaking, um, hardcore. She is concurrently in Milan with the Bolshoi Theatre's tour, interpreting Pierre Lacotte's (music by Cesare Pugni) La Fille du Pharaon at the Teatro degli Arcimboldi with 119 other Bolshoi ballerini. She describes how impressed she was with a certain Milanese tailor that she sampled while here in the city, how her mother pushed her into dancing, how dancing on stage is completely natural to her, and how she wouldn't demand ballerina offspring when she decides to have a family. She also tells Corriere that she hopes her Bolshoi colleagues do not show up at the theater tonight to see her dance, as today is their last day to go shopping and relax before leaving, and she rather see them take advantage of those things.