In August 1979, the ballet troupe of the Moscow Bolshoi Theater visited the United States. On the evening of August 23, the responsible persons found that one of the prime ministers of the troupe, Aleksandrs Godunov, had not reappeared at the hotel. The next morning, the suspicions came true: the leadership of the delegation was informed that Godunov had decided not to return to the Soviet homeland and requested political asylum in the United States. He was 29 years old at the time, and had 75 cents in his pocket at the time of his escape.
Godunov was far from the first of the great Soviet ballet stars to use guest performances to leave the totalitarian state. Rudolph Nuriyev did this already in 1961, in 1970 – Natalia Makarova, in 1974 – Mikhail Baryshnikov. All three danced in the ballet troupe of the Kirov Theater in Leningrad, but they had not yet escaped from the super-prestigious ballet troupe of the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow. It was the elite of the Soviet ballet, a unique artistic entity on the world stage, in which the presence outweighed many of the shortcomings of the Soviet reality. The members of this troupe were also affected by the Soviet reality much more gently than the average citizen. Regular guest performances opened an iron curtain for them, and at home the artists were also provided with the comfort that the Soviet system was capable of.
It is possible that Godunov was provoked by the workers of the cultural apparatus, before that he was not allowed to perform in guest performances for several years,
because Godunov, with his long blond hair, too much resembled a hippie and gave the wrong impression of Soviet culture.
The employees of the State Security Committee assigned to the troupe and working locally in the Soviet embassy saved what could be saved. Godunov’s wife, ballerina Lyudmila Vlasova, was hurriedly put on a flight to Moscow. The ballerina spent the next three days on the plane, because the US State Department denied takeoff, expressing suspicion that Vlasov was being taken by force. Godunov requested a meeting with his wife, the Soviet side agreed to a meeting on the plane. The ballet dancer did not risk getting into a ready-to-fly aircraft full of KGB officers. Ultimately, the conflict was resolved at the level of General Secretary Brezhnev and President Carter. Vlasova returned to Moscow and in 1982 her marriage to Godunov was officially dissolved.
Shortly after his defection, The New York Times wrote: “Mr. Godunov, with his long, blond curls and big, powerful frame, has every chance of becoming the ballet premiere of the rock generation. Younger audiences absolutely identify with him.” For a while, Godunov was indeed the prime minister in Mikhail Baryshnikov’s troupe, but then he quarreled with his friend and patron. Soon after, he left ballet altogether and turned to a film career. Godunov films in eight roles, the most important of which is the terrorist psychopath Karl in the first part of the film “Cietais niuts”. The career was developing successfully, but on May 18, 1995, Alexander Godunov was found dead in his apartment in Hollywood. The cause of death was an excessive amount of alcohol, which was supplemented by complications of the hepatitis virus. Godunov’s ashes were scattered in the Pacific Ocean, which washes both the shores of his last home, California, and his native Sakhalin. An epitaph is engraved on the ballerina’s plaque in Los Angeles: His future remained in the past – “His future remained in the past.”
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2023-08-23 08:14:27
#day #history #Russian #ballet #soloist #Alexander #Godunov #escapes #troupe #guest #performances
