Ismene Brown writes about "crime and moral evasion" for the Arts Desk.

Arts Desk

Ms Brown's conjectures about Tsiskaridze in an earlier blog piece are outrageous:

http://www.ismeneb.com/ismeneb.com/Blog ... ttack.html

Basically because Pavel Dmitrichenko's girlfriend is a pupil of Tsiskaridze's she makes the assumption that he ordered Pavel D. to arrange the attack, as warped an interpretation of the facts as you are likely to read.



Well, Pavel D. will get his day in court and more of the Bolshoi's dirty linen will be on show. I must say that I was shocked to hear that he accuses Filin of taking back-handers, I could name a couple of AD's that are guilty of that but I hadn't heard even a rumour accusing Filin of such a thing.

Pavel D's girlfriend is being tainted by association in all this and this quote attributed to Marina Kondratieva is beyond belief:



Fat? Fat!

Here is what Vorontsova looks like http://static.iltalehti.fi/ulkomaat/16758055_ul.jpg

And here is Kondratieva http://www.bolshoi.ru/r/71A578B9-A97D-4 ... ora-bg.jpg I don't see an awful lot of difference size-wise.

This is such a dreadful business and a tragedy for everyone involved.

David Remnick writes a lengthy article (12 pages) on the Bolshoi for the New Yorker.

New Yorker

That took some reading! Don't they employ editors at that publication? The whole article could have been whittled down to a third.

Very subjective on the whole but malign outside influences may yet prove to have played a part in the Filin attack.

I think we have to keep in mind that the standards at the Bolshoi and in Russian companies in general -- in terms of weight for the ladies, among other things -- are not the same as in Western companies. I have heard many other Russians say the same thing about Angelina, and about ballerinas at the Mariinsky that people in the West would consider thin or even underweight. If the pedagogues view someone that way, they are not looking for excuses...there are plenty of reasons to not give someone a role.

Also, Ismene Brown's assumptions are based on what I would call "inside facts" based purely what I have heard/seen from inside Russia in the past 3 weeks.

Today the Bolshoi dancers have gathered money to hire Pavel D. an attorney -- that is how much they believe he is innocent. The same goes for Filin who today is quoted in a live interview from Germany with his sister sitting by his side, where he explains that he never had any conflicts with/from Pavel and that someone obviously "worked really well" on getting him to confess...

http://www.vesti.ru/doc.html?id=1053348

In the Guardian, Miriam Elder reports that 300 Bolshoi artists have signed a letter asking for a Kremlin investigation.

Guardian

Boer Deng writes about the political ramifications for the future of the Bolshoi for the Atlantic Monthly.

Atlantic Monthly

Vladimir Isachenkov writes about the rising war of words at the Bolshoi for the Huffington Post.

Huffington Post

That Huffington Post article is fine but the captions to the 'Who's Who at the Bolshoi' feature at the end are both ridiculous and inaccurate.

I'm ITA with you Cassandra. And if this isn't enough, (not to mention Anastasia Volochkova's allegations over the weekend), now this escalation: http://news.mail.ru/incident/12434661/? ... &social=fb. According RIA Novosti, a person (or persons) unknown tried to break into Tsiskaridze's apartment today according to Moscow police.

Thank God he wasn't at home or I dread to think what might have happened to him. It seems no one is safe in the higher echelons of that company right now.