Silver Ball 09/30/1996 (1996)

In the art of ballet, there are names that speak for themselves, and Alexei Nikolayevich Ermolaev refers to such dancers.

He was called great during his lifetime.

The program is dedicated to the last years of the artist's life.

It was a period when he had a difficult relationship with the Bolshoi Theater staff, in particular, with Yuri Grigorovich, with whom they often had professional disagreements.

By this time Yermolaev's main post was a teacher-tutor, he had the whole color of the Bolshoi Theater in his class: Vladimir Vasiliev, Boris Akimov, Mikhail Lavrovsky, Maris Liepa, Vladimir Tikhonov, Alexander Godunov - all worked with him.

Since he was always very strict towards himself, this severity extended to others.

He was annoyed when articles appeared in the press that, in his opinion, exaggerated the merits of his students, he was afraid of this, since he did not want them to feel great ahead of time.

Nevertheless, he loved his students, just as they loved him.

Alexey Ermolaev moved to tutoring in 1961 and gave it 14 years.

During these years, under his leadership, a lot of ballet performances were staged, among which a special place is occupied by "Spartacus" and "Don Quixote", which includes his own variations, created personally for Vladimir Vasiliev.

The program includes excerpts of films-performances "Romeo and Juliet" and "Spartacus"; as much attention is paid to works on the performances "Stone Flower", "Raymonda", "Bakhchisarai Fountain".