Bolshoi Not Renewing Sergei Filin's Contract

July 29, 2015

According to a report in the New York Times, Moscow’s Bolshoi Theatre announced on its website today that it would not be renewing the contract of the ballet’s artistic director, Sergei Filin. Filin, whose contract is up in March 2016, made world headlines in 2013 when he had acid thrown in his face, an assault organized by Bolshoi soloist Pavel Dmitrichenko. Filin has since had multiple eye surgeries and is now partially blind.

 

The Bolshoi’s general manager, Vladimir Urin, told Russia’s TASS news agency that Filin’s ouster was “linked with the theater’s inner affairs” and that he was dissolving the position of artistic director to create a new position that would be “analogous to that of other opera and ballet theaters around the world.” It is unclear as to what exactly this means, but a new leader is expected to be announced in September. As for Filin, he told TASS that he has “no reasons to be offended” by the news and that “this is normal practice in the modern world.”