“When the Soviet Union fell, much of what the Bolshoi had in the way of evening-length ballets was pre-revolutionary classics revised according to Soviet dictates and post-revolutionary ballets created according to those dictates, tales of brave underdogs besting—or piteously defeated by—corrupt, powerful folk. How was the company to replace, or even augment, this material? How, after seventy-five years, do you unlearn the artistic lessons of Communism: the bombast, the corniness, the texturelessness? Not easily…”