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Sergei Polunin:
The confused rebel

by Angela Reinhardt

"My soul is no longer in the right place," Sergei Polunin wrote on Telegram in mid-December. "When was it ever?," is what one would like to ask the once great dancer. After a meteoric rise, he quit the Royal Ballet at the age of 22; the big companies in Russia did not want him, and his film career petered out in supporting roles without lines. Director Igor Zelensky then got him back on his feet at the Stanislavsky Ballet in Moscow and later brought him to Munich. Polunin carefully cultivated his reputation as the "bad boy of ballet" with pop videos, tattoos, drug rumors, and homophobia. But no sooner had his international career got back on track than the Russian invasion of Ukraine turned him into an ardent Putin supporter. He danced in occupied Crimea and lost all engagements in the West. Since then he has been touring Russia with his own company, but that too has now come to an end.

What the 35-year-old wrote on his social media channels at the end of the year sounds more confused than rebellious: He says he fears for his family's life, sometimes doesn't have enough money for diapers for his third child, and has invested his entire fortune to dance in honor of Putin. But the Russian cultural authorities cancel his performances and do not support him or his ice-dancing wife Elena Ilinykh, he claims. The positions he was given in Sevastopol at the time, director of the avant-garde new opera house and rector of the ballet academy, have now been filled by other favorites, the bass Ildar Abdrazakov and the ex-Bolshoi ballerina Maria Alexandrova. "I have fulfilled my mission here," writes Polunin, wanting to turn his back on Russia. But who would be keen on a ballet dancer with three Putin tattoos on his upper body?

The other renegades who left Munich for the East seem to be doing better: Ksenia Ryzhkova is dancing as a first soloist at the Stanislavski Theater and, like her British husband Jonah Cook, who is now a choreographer, often works with Polunin. Her ex-colleague Prisca Zeisel is constantly on classical duty at the Mikhailovsky Ballet, dancing all her dream roles, and yet, just like Jonah Cook, she is currently posting a striking number of memories of the Bavarian State Ballet. Only Igor Zelensky, who was supposed to become theater director in Sevastopol before Polunin, has been missing since his return to Russia; the liaison with Putin's daughter Katerina Tikhonova seems to guarantee himm anonymity and a living.

Even the Russian newspapers are now mocking Polunin's tirades. He certainly lacks the fascination of earlier stars like Vladimir Vasiliev who effortlessly filled large halls; perhaps the bad boy is simply dancing too badly these days. Sergei, the rebel, continues to twirl his virtuoso jumps in spectacle-like pieces entirely tailored to him, but now comes across very tired in film clips on social media. The Ukrainian-born is now actually complaining that he is no longer respected in his hometown of Kherson and shamelessly throws himself at the Trump confidant under a picture of Elon Musk: "I would like to ask Elon to help me blow up the dance world. That could change the life of the ballet and other dance industries and be a very interesting tool for international cooperation." Putin doesn't want to play with him anymore; little Sergei is looking for another big madman who still thinks he's an artist.