The Bolshoi Ballet Feels the Squeeze of <i> Perestroika</i> : Dance: The Soviet Union’s troubles are plaguing the renowned company. Its head calls the situation ‘quite traumatic.’

As Yuri Grigorovich, artistic director and chief choreographer of Moscow’s Bolshoi Ballet, sits comfortably in his New York hotel suite, he is surrounded by reminders that all is not serenely status quo for him and his renowned dance company.

On the coffee table in front of the couch he is sitting on are photocopies of English and American newspaper clippings. A couple, from London, are interviews with Irek Mukhamedov, the charismatic Bolshoi dancer whose flamboyant, bare-chested photo is on the company’s promotional material and who recently quit the Bolshoi to join Britain’s Royal Ballet. Another is a New York newspaper report about dissatisfied Bolshoi personnel involved in a hunger strike to dramatize “trouble” within the Bolshoi enclave and to cast doubt on the company leadership.

The small-framed Russian with a gray crew-cut actually brings up Mukhamedov himself, early in this interview, as a matter of course. In relating how the economic situation in the Soviet Union has been “very difficult for a long time,” he mentions the small size of a Soviet dancer’s income.

“Because the salaries are so appallingly low, many of the artists, for example Irek Mukhamedov, want to sign contracts with foreign companies.” He then refers to a recent interview from London with the Tartar danseur who came to worldwide attention as one of Grigorovich’s most favored protagonists.

“I don’t want to put words in his mouth,” the Bolshoi boss said, preferring to let stand Mukhamedov’s words regarding his relocation in England. The English article refers to the Soviet dancer’s concern for his recent bride and the upcoming birth of their child, including “good medical care,” “a comfortable place” to live, and “plenty of clothes and toys.”

Grigorovich says that he bears Mukhamedov no ill will: “We still don’t know if he’ll be coming on this tour (which reaches Shrine Auditorium Aug. 7 and then San Diego Aug. 21). There are no official problems from my end. He is one of my favorite dancers. It would be my pleasure to invite him to dance.”

The director-choreographer noted that the Soviet Union’s “new situation,” especially in light of such moves as Mukhamedov’s, called for new policies. He pondered a new “contract system,” emphasizing that “they’re are two sides to a contract--it both imposes obligations and gives rights--and we would be happy with that, but unfortunately the powers that be will not agree because they see it as sort of a social injustice.”

He mentioned resistance from old-timers, particularly trade unions. The possibility of the theater not renewing a contract strikes some socially conscious citizens as too vulnerable a situation.

“Our minister of culture, Nikolai Gubenko, a former actor, understands the need for such a system,” Grigorovich said, “But he hasn’t been successful yet.”

The one-day hunger strike at the Bolshoi Theater that got documented in the press is related, in Grigorovich’s view, to such fears. The event was instigated by Yuri Grigoriev, a recently dismissed Bolshoi Opera singer, who is also head of the Bolshoi Communist Party Committee. Grigoriev was joined by various fellow members of the Communist Party organization, “singers, a couple of dancers, probably some firemen, trying to hold on to the power Grigoriev can feel slipping away from him.”

This group, and its action, Grigorovich noted, “wanted to create the atmosphere that there are terrible problems around the theater, and in fact, the situation is quite traumatic in the whole country, so you could probably say that the situation at the Bolshoi Theater is better than any other place in the country, because we are working, creating new works, and bringing up new generations of dancers.”

The choreographer addressed the issue that he had not created a really new work in the last eight years or so by noting that he had restaged various works, with extensive revisions, and that he had worked outside the Bolshoi on other stagings.

Though he was perhaps stressing new blood in his company of dancers to deflect undue concentration on the loss of Mukhamedov, he did speak enthusiastically of Mark Peretokin, Yuri Posokhov, and Yuri Klevtsov. He also mentioned young ballerinas Olga Suvorova and Svetlana Filippova.

Thinking of the new dance talent he would proudly cast in prominent roles on this upcoming tour, the choreographer thought with bemusement about the blame Grigoriev and his strikers laid at his feet for the departure of certain artists from the Bolshoi Theater in the recent past.

He remembered a time, pre- perestroika , when Yegveny Mravinsky, an illustrious conductor of the Leningrad Symphony Orchestra, returned from a tour of Japan without some of the musicians: “ ‘Why is it,’ posed a Leningrad party secretary, ‘that musicians flee from you?’ But Mravinsky corrected his party boss, ‘No! They flee from you !’ ”

As a director who has worked in the Soviet system for more than 25 years, Grigorovich has no doubt pulled his share of strings. On the subject of state subsidy, however, he is quick to note the problems when complicated strings are attached to the purse.

In his view, “The theater needs and should have more independence from the state.” Certainly nothing is clearly “black and white,” he noted before pausing to offer a fairly dark but he felt thought-provoking Russian saying: “The way to kill an artist is to feed him.”