Ballet’s Great Runaway Brings Spotlight To Moscow’s No. 2 Troupe

Less than two years after he walked out on his burgeoning career as a principal at London’s Royal Ballet, Sergei Polunin is drawing critical raves and ravenous ticket-buyers to the Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Music Theatre, whose ballet company has always labored in the shadow of the mighty – and now strife-plagued – Bolshoi.