We’re bringing Swan Lake to Britain — and sending a message

When Nina Ananiashvili was dancing with the Bolshoi ballet in the Eighties, the Soviet authorities had control over her movements. “When we finished our tour they always took our passports and they were locked in the office,” the Georgian former ballerina says. After the fall of the USSR she found out about invitations that had been hidden from her, such as from John Neumeier, the director of the Hamburg Ballet. She has fond memories of dancing in London when “we became free” and finally meeting the great Royal Ballet choreographer Kenneth MacMillan in 1990. “It’s a different feeling when you are free,” she says. “It’s really difficult to explain.”
Ananiashvili, 61, is the artistic director of the State Ballet of Georgia and is bringing her company to London for the first time in its 175-year history, to perform Swan Lake at the London Coliseum. She is clear about her aim for the performances: “I want to show our level of classical ballet; I want to show Georgia is international.”
Ananiashvili is talking to me from her office in Tbilisi between rehearsals. She is joined by the principal ballerina, Nino “Nini” Samadashvili, who says: “We’re going to show our country, our company to the audience. I’m very excited and nervous.”
With the Bolshoi and the Mariinsky, who used to be regulars in the UK, banished, there is a gap to be filled. And now is a significant time to be showcasing Georgian identity. The country is caught between Europe and its Soviet past, with a Putin-linked oligarch wielding power and with mass protests this summer over a “foreign influence” law that many worry is similar to that used in Russia and is already affecting EU-Georgian relations.
“I was protesting. Everybody in my generation went out to fight for our independence,” Samadashvili, 31, says. “Now I don’t know what’s going to happen so I’m trying to concentrate on ballet.” Ananiashvili didn’t go to the protests, but her family did, including her husband, Grigol Vashadze, an opposition politician who recently quit. “It was really stressful for all of us,” she says quietly.
Yet throughout most of the interview Ananiashvili is determinedly positive about Georgia. She says it’s “wonderful” that they live in a democratic country where young people “can say everything”, and talks about the transformation she has seen since moving back in 2004 after her work for the Bolshoi and the American Ballet Theatre. “[When] I moved to Tbilisi there were no lights, no heat, no cars in the street. It was such a bad period in Georgia. People didn’t have food, they didn’t have a salary. Years later, the country has changed … our streets now have better lighting than any other country. It’s really pretty and beautiful.”
She mentions lights because there is a memory that stands out from 1987 during her time working for the Bolshoi. “It was in Paris, I’m dancing Raymonda and Giselle. I see beautiful Christmas lighting in the street and I say, ‘Oh my God, it’s so sad that my family cannot see this beauty — how beautiful it is to have lighting this good on streets and shops.’ I was so upset.”
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She still has friends in Russia. Samadashvili also has lots of Russian friends from ballet, although they have moved away because they don’t support the war in Ukraine. Ananiashvili mentions the Russian invasion of the northern Georgian territories of South Ossetia and Abkhazia in 2008 and talks about her longing for “Ukrainian freedom”. But she refuses to be antagonistic.
“We want to enjoy Europe because we feel part of this family. This doesn’t mean we want to fight Russia. We want to be neighbours,” she says. “We are just four million [people] … we want to save our language, our culture, our everything. All our history; we’re fighting for that.”
And so to the forthcoming spotlight on Georgia in London. Why did they choose Swan Lake? It’s a ballet with a weighty history. Soviet state-controlled TV channels played it to block news coverage of the coup against Gorbachev in 1991. In 2022 the independent channel TV Rain used it to sign off when it had to stop broadcasting after pressures from the Russian authorities. The four ballerinas from the Dance of the Cygnets have appeared as protest graffiti in Russia and the group Pussy Riot released a music video called Swan Lake in 2023.
But Ananiashvili offers an apolitical explanation for her choice. “If people see Swan Lake danced well, it means the level of the company is good.” I ask Samadashvili if she takes inspiration from any particular production or dancer. “Did you see this picture?” she replies, smiling adoringly as she points to a photograph hanging on the wall behind them of Ananiashvili as Odette. The two are close, and Ananiashvili calls her dancers “my children”.
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Ananiashvili has staged The Nutcracker in a Georgian context, moving the story to early 20th-century Tbilisi and including some traditional dances. But, she insists, don’t expect that here. This Swan Lake “is a full classical production”. She tells me that the Coliseum producers, one of whom she knows from her Bolshoi days, are taking a risk inviting them over. “We are not Bolshoi, Mariinsky, Royal Ballet. We don’t have a name in the ballet world where people would go and immediately buy tickets. So it’s very difficult,” she says. “But I’m so thankful. They do this for me personally, I feel, and for my country.”
The State Ballet of Georgia performs Swan Lake at the Coliseum, London WC2, August 28 to September 8, londoncoliseum.org
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