Former Royal Ballet star Sergei Polunin said He is set to leave Russia with his family, despite being a vocal supporter of President Vladimir Putin and Russia’s invasion of his native Ukraine.
“My soul is not in that place,” Polunin, who was born in the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson and became a Russian citizen in 2018, wrote on his Telegram channel late Sunday.
“My time in Russia ended long ago, as if I had fulfilled my mission here for now,” he said. “Russian people are very kind and humane. Where they will go next is still unknown, but I can only hope that their souls are calm and in place.”
According to the RBC News Bureau, dancers complained over the summer that they were receiving unsolicited packages in the mail and expressed concern that they might contain explosives. It was not immediately clear whether his departure from Russia was related to these concerns.
Composer Philip Glass accuses theaters in annexed Crimea of ’piracy’
Polunin, 35, has three tattoos of Putin on his chest and shoulder and a Ukrainian trident on his right hand. He previously helped organize donations to Russian soldiers fighting in Ukraine and was one of President Putin’s allies.Delegates in the presidential election held earlier this year.
After Russia invades Ukraine in 2022, Polunin’s show will cancel Uzbekistan authorities in Italy after online backlash reprimanded They accused him of pro-war performance that deviated from previously agreed programs.
In 2010, Polunin became the youngest male principal in the history of London’s Royal Ballet, where he gained a reputation as the “bad boy of ballet”. Two years later, he went to Russia to become a principal dancer at both the Stanislavsky Music Theater in Moscow and the Novosibirsk State Academic Opera and Ballet.
Polunin was appointed director of the Sevastopol Opera and Ballet Theater in annexed Crimea in 2019.
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