📍Kotelnicheskaya Embankment 1/15, Moscow, Russia
1952 – 1998“In the early 1950s I moved into apartment 185 in the new tower on Kotelnicheskaya Embankment, one of the seven great Stalin-era skyscrapers of Moscow, standing where the Yauza river meets the Moskva, close to the Kremlin. I had come to Moscow from Leningrad in 1944 to dance at the Bolshoi, and this flat, high above the river, became my home for the rest of my life. Many famous actors, writers and scientists lived in the building, and it was a world of its own. My apartment was modest and cosy, filled with porcelain, old photographs and books; I had a library of about two thousand four hundred volumes, many inscribed to me by their authors. I was a private, reserved person, and I treasured the quiet of my home after the noise of the theatre. From my windows I could see the river and the city. I danced Juliet, Giselle and many other roles at the Bolshoi until 1960, when I was fifty, and then I became a teacher and coach, working with young ballerinas such as Ekaterina Maximova and Nina Semizorova, for more than thirty years. After my death in 1998, my apartment was preserved just as I had left it, and in 2004 it opened as a museum, a branch of the Bakhrushin Theatre Museum, with my furniture, photographs, letters and books. My television still works, and the calendar in my kitchen is still turned to March 1998. A memorial plaque on the building, designed by the sculptor Anatoli Bichukov, honours me, and visitors come from all over the world to see where the quiet dancer lived.”
🗺️ Approximate location today
📍 Street view today