Maya Plisetskaya. Five Days with a Legend. A Documentary History

In 1996, journalist and television presenter Vadim Vernik filmed a documentary about Maya Plisetskaya titled “Maya. A Lesson in Classical Dance” (in the television series “Saturday Evening with a Star”). The filming took place in a small Finnish town, Mikkeli, and for five days, Vernik was fortunate enough to communicate extensively with the great ballerina. Years later, the idea emerged to create a book based on these conversations, especially since most of the material did not make it into the film due to time constraints. This book is the author’s attempt to show Maya Plisetskaya “through his own eyes,” to paint a portrait without posing and the various myths surrounding her name. The filming of the documentary involved Rodion Shchedrin, Bella Akhmadulina, Boris Messerer, Plisetskaya’s stage partners Nikolai Fadeechev, Alexander Bogatyryov, Patrick Dupont, Vladimir Levashov. They also became characters in the book.