Writer Marina Harss on choreographer Alexei Ratmansky, the boy from Kyiv

Isabella Boylston and Ballerina Book Club | October 23, 2023

To mark the publication of “The Boy from Kyiv: Alexei Ratmansky’s Life in Ballet,” Ballerina Book Club corresponded with author Marina Harss about writing the biography, a portrait painted with interviews, trips into archives and time spent in studios taking in the choreographic process.

Read the conversation below, and sign up for the Ballerina Book Club newsletter for updates delivered straight to your inbox.

Left: Marina Harss. Photo by Marco Nistico.

To start with, the big question: What initially drew you to write about Alexei?

I was immediately intrigued by the first ballet I saw of his, “The Bright Stream,” when the Bolshoi Ballet brought it to New York in 2005. It was so lively, and funny, and the characterizations were so alive, and the dancers looked relaxed and human while doing amazing things onstage. Then the year after, he made “Russian Seasons” for New York City Ballet, and that revealed a whole other side of him: abstract and poetic, able to tell stories without really telling stories. It was a ballet full of mysteries, that allowed you to dream up stories of your own. And it had so much depth — it dealt with death and loss and the feeling of being trapped in your own skin. It was just immediately clear that he was a very different kind of choreographer from what we were seeing, and that his talent was really wide-ranging.

Though this is your debut book, you’ve written countless articles across numerous publications. What major differences in process did you encounter when writing this book, as compared to your other work?

It was day and night, and made me want to write more books. For an article, you use a tiny bit of your research and conversations. It’s a quick overview of what you’ve learned. You make a few points, connect the dots, and that’s it. Here, I was able to really delve into the material, find connections, build an arc. I did numerous interviews and sat with Ratmansky for hours and hours. I harvested the stories of his parents and early influences. I visited Kyiv and Moscow and St. Petersburg, and experienced the places where he had lived and worked, and got a sense of what those places were like and what they might have given him. I felt like I could say more or less everything I wanted on this one subject, explore every avenue and really tell a story, thoroughly, from beginning to end. The process was deeply satisfying.

Dancing the pas de deux from Pyotr Gusev’s “Harlequinade” with classmate Irina Grishina in his last year at the Bolshoi Academy, 1985– 86. Photograph courtesy of Alexei Ratmansky.

How much interdisciplinary work did the book require in terms of reviewing archival footage or attending rehearsals?

There was a lot! As you probably saw, I was at a lot of rehearsals. I was especially excited when I was able to watch the creation process from beginning to end, especially at ABT [American Ballet Theatre]. Not every day, of course, but checking in every so often to see the progress. It was fascinating to see all the different parts being created, then honed, then put together. Like a mosaic taking shape. I watched him work with dancers in New York, Berlin, Moscow, Zurich and Miami. But I also watched a lot of video, especially of Ratmansky’s early work — he has a large archive which he allowed me to look at — and of his own dancing. It all informed my impressions of how he moved when he was a dancer, of how he works with dancers, and of how he thinks as a choreographer.

Do you have a personal favorite Ratmansky ballet?

Haha, do you? It’s impossible to choose just one. But three of my favorites are “The Bright Stream,” “Harlequinade” and “Namouna.” They’re all so different. “The Bright Stream” is full of irony and high spirits, and riffs on old Soviet ballets and movies; “Harlequinade” is delicate and charming, like a window into a wonderfully detailed little world; and “Namouna” is both absurd and highly sophisticated. But I also have a soft spot for an early work he created for Nina Ananiashvili, called “Dreams of Japan,” which is like leafing through a volume of Japanese prints. I’m always surprised by how imaginative and strange his ideas are.

A moment from the pas de deux in the final act of “The Sleeping Beauty,” featuring American Ballet Theatre Joseph Gorak and Isabella Boylston. Photograph by Andrea Mohin for The New York Times. American Ballet Theatre artists appear courtesy of the American Guild of Musical Artists (AGMA).

What was the most surprising thing you learned throughout the process of writing this book?

How consistent his personality and approach to work has been, from the beginning. As a kid in ballet school in Moscow, where he was known as “the boy from Kyiv” because he came from Ukraine, he used to make up dances for his friends. But it wasn’t a game for him. It was serious. He had clear ideas of what he wanted, and he was intent that those ideas should be legible in the final product. So he insisted on rehearsals and an almost professional seriousness. And for some reason, his friends took him seriously and did what he asked. One of his childhood friends said to me, “I don’t know why we did it, but we did it.” Even before ballet school, when he was a little kid in Kyiv, he would gather his friends and put on shows. And even then, he took it seriously. He hasn’t changed that much.

Although you started this book a decade ago, could you please speak a little about the importance of releasing this book now, and also the importance of Alexei’s work at this time?

I never expected that my biography of Alexei Ratmansky would be about anything other than the origins of the creativity and originality of a contemporary ballet artist. His ballets are a creation of a very rich imagination, and I wanted to understand what had gone into feeding that imagination. That was enough.

Ratmansky as Alain in “La Fille mal gardée,” around 1991. Photograph by Vitaly Shats, courtesy of the National Opera House archives, Larisa Tarasenko, archivist.

But as I was completing the book, the whole world changed. Russia, the country in which he trained to be a dancer, invaded Ukraine, the country where he grew up, where he started his ballet career, where he met his wife Tatiana, and where his parents and sister live to this day. His sense of himself suddenly split. The meaning of the book shifted for me: It’s about the education of a post-Soviet, global artist, who became aware that history does not always move forward in a positive direction, toward freedom and lightness. Sometimes you are faced with the fact that art and conflict and national identity are deeply connected. It’s a big change, and an important one.

Note: This interview has been edited lightly.