bolshoi means grand in russian

"I kept saying, ‘Please call Masha, please call Masha.’ I really thought I was dying. (...) I don’t want to discuss the nightmare that came next: my wife’s reaction, the reaction of my relatives who saw me in this condition. I could hear them crying and I understood that what they saw in my face was something . . . horrendous.” (x)

Is anyone else ridiculously intrigued by the acid-incident at the Bolshoi Theatre?

All the drama, all the egos involved etc. etc.
The reporting on it has been top-notch & such an interesting behind the scenes look at this industry,
which is why I thought I'd post a bit of what I've been reading about it.

"The Bolshoi is a mini-cosmos, corrupt and crumbling, like the country in which it exists."(x)

"Sometimes an institution has an uncanny way of embodying the society to which it belongs. (...) So it is at the pinnacles of Russian dance. Since the nineteenth century, the country’s two principal stages—the Mariinsky, in St. Petersburg, and the Bolshoi, in Moscow—have acted as microcosms of imperial Russia, Soviet Russia, and, now, Vladimir Putin’s Russia." (x)

"Ballet is all about beauty, and all that dancers have is their looks and their bodies. It's the tool they use to make a living. The assailant didn't want to kill Filin, who still appeared boyish despite his 42 years. Instead, he wanted to destroy him." (x)

'Ballet really matters in Russia. "That's very good for us," says Bolshoi spokeswoman Katerina Novikova. "But it can also be part of our problem." For generations, tsars spent lavishly on the two main companies, the Mariinsky in St Petersburg and the Bolshoi in Moscow. (...)

Ballet is also a source of passion and pride among ordinary Russians. "In the theatre, I see people who look as though they don't know where their next meal is coming from. But there's an expression on their faces, an intensity that I don't think I ever saw at Covent Garden."' (x)

Pictures from The New York Times.