Svetlana Adyrkhaeva

Adyrkhaeva was born on 12 May 1938 in a village of Khumalag in North Ossetia. She received ballet training at the Leningrad State Choreographic Institute and graduated from there in 1955. Three years later she danced Odette-Odile (in Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake) and won first prize for it. She was a soloist with the Chelyabinsk Opera and Ballet Theatre from 1955 to 1958 and the Odessa State Academic Theatre from 1958 to 1960.[1]

In 1960 she became a soloist with the Bolshoi Ballet, remaining with the company until 1988.[2] There, she became Galina Ulanova's disciple and also received further mentorship from Marina Semyonova. She participated in a ballet for two generations playing characters such as Aegina in Spartacus, and many others.[3] From 1978 to 1981 she was member of the Russian Institute of Theatre Arts from which she graduated in 1980 and became a teacher there a year later. From 1995 to 2001 she was a teacher at the Dance Academy of the New Humanitarian University of Natalia Nesterova and then held the same position at the Bolshoi Theater from 2001.[2]

Adyrkhaeva died on 27 August 2023, at the age of 85.[1]