"I gave my resignation yesterday, it will be announced today on the site (of the theater), I am leaving Moscow tomorrow in view of the situation," he told AFP, without further ado. weigh down.
"I regret this decision, I worked in harmony (with the theater teams), I leave with sadness but the context no longer allows me to work calmly," he added.
Appointed dance director of the Stanislavski Academic Musical Theater five years ago, Laurent Hilaire was the second Frenchman to lead a ballet troupe in Russia, almost 150 years after his illustrious predecessor, the dancer and choreographer Marius Petipa, a major figure in dance in the 19th century and director of the Imperial Ballet in Saint Petersburg.
Considered one of the most brilliant French dancers of his generation, he renewed the repertoire of the Russian company, the third after the Bolshoi in Moscow and the Mariinsky in Saint Petersburg.
Born in 1962, Laurent Hilaire is a graduate of the Paris Opera School of Dance.
Engaged in the ballet corps, he was named "Etoile" in 1985, at the age of 22, by Rudolf Nureyev, a dancer from the USSR who had defected to the Soviet Union.
© 2022 AFP