90 Years Since the Birth of the Legendary Nina Timofeyeva

On June 11, the legendary ballerina Nina Timofeyeva would have turned 90

              

They once wrote that she could do fouettés on a postage stamp. Her heroines—Aegina, Giselle, Odile, Laurencia, Kitri, the Mistress of the Copper Mountain, Mekhmene Banu, Lady Macbeth—were women on the edge, characters in the throes of passion, sculpted with a sharp chisel yet alive, breathing. Timofeyeva’s dance did not seek lightness—it emerged from the weight of the world, carved itself through resistance, shaped the air into form.

She possessed a rare gift, and her stage path unfolded in its own, unusual way. She was a star, a muse—in many ways, a modern-day classical heroine, with a powerful temperament and extraordinary physicality. If her style could be summed up in a single word, it would be fire. She truly burned from within. Unlike more "crystalline," academic ballerinas, Timofeyeva treated the body like a volcano. Her movements were sharp and dramatic, her technique—phenomenal: jumps with wild amplitude, turns with surgical precision—and all of it seemed to pass through some private nerve, some fierce inner impulse. She embodied both tragedy and the fury of life—and audiences couldn’t help but surrender to the force of her presence, a magnetism that remains, to this day, utterly mysterious.

She was a prima ballerina of the Bolshoi Theatre, where she danced for over three decades, and a People’s Artist of the USSR. But before all that—she was a true girl from Leningrad, a graduate of the Leningrad Choreographic School under Natalia Kamkova (a student of Agrippina Vaganova). At her graduation performance, she danced some of the most demanding classical roles. And yet, upon joining the theater, she was placed in the last row of the corps de ballet. It was only by chance—when the principal ballerina was injured that morning—that Timofeyeva was given the opportunity to dance Odette in Swan Lake. That moment marked the beginning of a remarkable career.

She spent three years performing leading roles on the stage of the Kirov Theatre (now Mariinsky) before being invited by Leonid Lavrovsky, a fellow native of Leningrad and then artistic director of the Bolshoi, to come to Moscow. It was there that a new type of ballerina emerged—Timofeyeva brought to life unconventional characters: the Courtesan from City at Night to Bartók’s music in Lavrovsky’s choreography, Assel from Vlasov’s ballet after Aitmatov, and Leili in Kasian Goleizovsky’s poetic dance drama. Her three iconic roles at the Bolshoi were created under Yuri Grigorovich, the theater’s chief choreographer from 1964: Aegina in Spartacus, the Mistress of the Copper Mountain in The Stone Flower, and Mekhmene Banu in Legend of Love.
Once, during a performance of The Stone Flower, her partner Nikolai Dorokhov—dancing the role of Danila—tore his calf muscle mid-variation. Without hesitation, Timofeyeva began improvising, performing his part in addition to her own solo until intermission arrived.

Her Aegina in Spartacus was a force of political will—a woman capable of conquering the Roman Empire with her presence alone. As Giselle, she defied expectations: her strong nature may have seemed mismatched with the fragility of the role, but she transformed it into a figure of deep tragedy rather than sentimental sorrow. Her Odile in Swan Lake was no less than a demon en pointe—dazzling, predatory, unstoppable.
She starred in ballet films and televised productions. On stage, she was an extrovert; in life, a recluse. She gave to the poor, rescued animals, and remained wary of people. “The theater is a giant meat grinder,” she once said. “It takes in flesh and spits out bones.”
She avoided empty company, could not forgive dishonesty or mediocrity, and shunned parties—believing they weren’t worth the energy. She adored the theater as an art of transformation. During a tour (perhaps in Germany or the U.S.) her Odile drew such an uproar that she was called to bow three times, separately from the rest of the company.

In 1990, Hassia Levy-Agron, the founder of the dance department at the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance, called composer Mark Kopytman with a question: whom should she invite to Israel to raise the standard of classical ballet? Kopytman reached out to Evgeny Svetlanov, who replied without hesitation: “You know, there’s a Jewish woman in Moscow, Timofeyeva—she has this wild charisma and iron will. I think she’s exactly what you need.”

And so Nina Timofeyeva was invited to teach ballet in Jerusalem—first for a series of master classes, and a year later, to stay for good. In 2004, together with her daughter Nadya, she founded the Jerusalem Ballet School, and four years later, the Jerusalem Ballet company. She continued to perform, to teach, and to dance well into her late sixties. She remained slim, light, and strikingly youthful. She danced with clarity of purpose—because she had to make a living. Her pension went almost entirely to stray cats and dogs.

Time moves on, but she remains—in film, in the bodies of those who learned from her, in the echoes of her phrasing and breath. She lives on, too, in her daughter, Nadya Timofeyeva—herself a ballerina, choreographer, and co-founder of the Jerusalem Ballet School, continuing her mother’s legacy by creating a space where the spirit and tradition of classical ballet meet the freedom of artistic expression.

On June 11, Nina Timofeyeva would have turned 90. She has been gone for ten years now—but somehow, it never quite feels like she left. It’s more as if she stepped into that timeless ballet of the immortals.

Photos courtesy of Nadya Timofeyeva’s personal archive