Reviews

Clement Grisp «The Financial Times»
An absolute queen of performance – Svetlana Zakharova is much more wonderful than ever. She easily changes form a serene dance to the game of a true temptress. Medora smiles and the world loses head. For today, Zakharova is the most prominent and the brightest prima ballerina in the world.

Yuri Grigorovich
Well now, Svetlana Zakharova entered the row of the famous names of the Russian Ballet, inaugurating with her appearance something new, peculiar to the modern world. We first met at “Spartacus” and I noticed her pronounced tendency to change from a performance to performance as well as her inner tune to growth and self-revealization. Moreover, her nature, which is one in a thousand, possesses the mechanism of self-perfection. My greatest hope is that her growing authority of the ballet dancer would strengthen the positions of the Russian Ballet, its ground, essence, depth and beauty. I want her to become a protection writ of art like all her precursors. May this path be for her not only enough difficult (an easy victory is not a victory), but also happy.

Yves Saint-Laurent
She is genius! She has no superior in the world! Splendid talent!

«Repubblica»
Svetlana Zakharova – is a myth ballerina who embodies a vivid concreteness of the poetical emotion, technical perfection of academic dance expressed by magic dynamic lines (impressively light arms, legs, creating illusion of infinity). This is the dream of the ladies en pointes of the golden age (such creations as Pavlova and Spesivtseva), which is miraculously coming true.

«The Telegraph»
This incontestable star of Bolshoi (without any taint of exaggeration) has the body, which may be possessed by one among ten millions of ballerinas. Tall, strong, expressive, delicately accurate and incredibly sinuated, it allows her to perform double and even triple fouettes as easy as each of us would tip back in armchair, and – just like all great artists – she always looks heavenly calm!

Lyudmila Semeniaka
Svetlana is like the precious Stradivari, and to play on it is unalloyed pleasure and great responsibility. She is gifted with beauty and she puts it in each line and posture. She performs at the best stages of the world and wishes to form her own representations absorbing this experience. To the Bolshoi Theater, Svetlana came as not a pupil but as a master. But, from my point of view, the perfect level demonstrated by her, is not the limit of revealing her artistic virtuosity.

«The Financial Times»
She is beautiful and possesses a great technique, so she faces all difficulties on her path with smile; her feet are perfect, she has a wonderful and gentle body and glorious lines. And being in the narrow framework of this drama, she can persuade us in every emotion experienced by her. All is simple – she is a wonder.

«The Times»
The dance by Svetlana Zakharova is a true luxury, it is filled with energy and classical details, and her solo performances are the example of grace and elegance!

Vladimir Vasiliev
The nature gifted Svetlana Zakharova with all that may wish a girl dreaming of ballet. It seems that nature has modelled her in canons of classical beauty, in which there are perfectly mixed all qualities needed for a perfect dance. What is Svetlana Zakharova? Perfection? For someone – yes. But this perfection has the only minus – dryness of limit. And it often seemed to me, especially in pure classic. But suddenly, a short work with Svetlana in the rehearsal hall changed my vision of Svetlana Zakharova as an actress completely. I felt her inner passion and vivid beating of heart. In Adagio from “Macbeth”, Svetlana became for me a happy discovery. I hope she will never stop in her art and this is my wish to her.

Francesco Ventriglia
Svetlana is the icon of the classical ballet. She is the ideal Swan, ideal Bayadère… And I thought of taking this myth she symbolizes as a basis of the ballet “Zakharova supergame”, and then transform it and create from Svetlana a character of the nonexistent virtual world of a computer game. I wished to make her descend from the Olympus and play a bit with the very idea of classical ballet as it is.

Jaroslav Sedov “Gazeta”
Zakharova’s physical and artistic abilities embody the music by Prokofiev… In her dance manner there is fluent unfolding of lines of wondrous beauty and reverence, and brilliance of virtuously danced small pas shining like silver thaw. For her Cinderella, she found a special pace peculiar for her only – it seems that her heroine walks above the ground fearing of frighten away her dream and movingly changing with happiness. Her dance unites the same ringing purity, touching adolescent awkwardness and agitated intolerance to inaccuracy and playing out of tune – that in the music. Sometimes, it seems that all fairy Prokofiev’s whispers, murmurs and ringing – are nothing but echo of Zakharova’s movement.