📍Barentsburg, Svalbard, Norway
1932 – 1934“I was born in Moscow in November 1925 into a family of artists: my mother, Rachel Messerer, was a silent film actress, and her brother and sister, Asaf and Sulamith Messerer, were stars of the Bolshoi Ballet. My father, Mikhail Plisetski, was a mining engineer and a committed communist, and in 1932, when I was not yet seven, he was sent to run the Soviet coal mines at Barentsburg, on the Arctic island of Spitsbergen, and to serve as Soviet consul there. We sailed north aboard the icebreaker Krasin. Barentsburg was a tiny mining settlement on a fjord, surrounded by snow, ice and mountains, with the polar night lasting months and the midnight sun in summer. I loved it. I learned to ski, and after that I hardly took my skis off; I raced around the settlement, exploring the snowfields and the shore. There was a small club for the miners, and I made my first appearance on a stage there, in a small part in the opera Rusalka, performed by the miners and their families. I danced and performed for anyone who would watch, and everyone could see that I was born to be on stage. In 1934 we went back to Moscow, and I persuaded my parents to let me audition for the Bolshoi ballet school. I was accepted, and I went on to become the prima ballerina of the Bolshoi, famous for my Dying Swan and my Carmen, and for my fiery spirit. Barentsburg still remembers the little girl on skis who first stepped onto a stage in its miners' club.”
🗺️ Approximate location today
📍 Street view today