Kisses and Bites

Bitterly cold weather and a public transport strike this February morning: There is probably only one man who is happy about the sub-zero temperatures. A guest at the Staatsballett Berlin: Yuri Possokhov, one of the eminent choreographers of contemporary classical dance and Kirill Serebrennikov's sparring partner on Nurejew. The temperatures may remind him of both the country of his birth and the city of his apprenticeship: Possokhov was born in 1964 in Luhansk, in what is now Ukraine, received his training in Moscow under Pyotr Pestov, and danced at the Bolshoi, in Copenhagen, and in San Francisco. There, he has just directed Eugene Onegin, while his works continue to be shown at Russian theaters—an interview? He prefers to conduct it only in writing. This is initially perplexing, but ...