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‘I want only to dance! This is the main thing’. These the words of the eighteen-year dancing prodigy, Ivan Vasiliev in answer to my question about what he was planning to do on his very first night in London. This answer and its apparent dedication to his art, epitomizes everything about Vasiliev, a brilliant virtuoso soloist lately acquired by the Bolshoi Ballet. As I, the London tour’s press agent and the Russian interpreter settled down to well-earned gin-and-tonics in the elegant hotel bar, Vasiliev, together with his dancing partner, Natalia Osipova, joining him on the whirlwind pre-publicity tour, was packing his dance bag in readiness for an evening attending private class at the Royal Ballet’s studios. Earlier, during the actual interview, when Osipova entered the room to collect some of her belongings, Vasiliev leapt to his feet, grabbing her around the waist, practising a lift and a step here-or-there. Here is a dancer positively bristling with energy: there is no stopping him.

This energy, boundless in its force, defines his career thus far. He arrived at the company (aged seventeen) last September, and aside from his famous name (he is no relation, however), he brings no historic Bolshoi pedigree, yet he is already spoken of as one of its greatest stars. He has performed but a handful of times outside of Russia, yet many declare him to be “the next Baryshnikov” and though his dance is known to most people only through internet video clips, seasoned balletomanes are declaring they have never seen a dancer with a jump such as his. It is the stuff of legend; yet this boy, who began as folk dancer in Dnepropetrovsk in the Ukraine, shrugs it off nonchalantly, with his winning and utterly charming smirk.
 

The comparison with Baryshnikov is, in truth, misleading – Vasiliev is much shorter, his legs are bulkier and he does not (yet) perform with that ineffable sense of classical purity – but the seismic manner in which he is surely to rock the ballet world is undoubtedly comparable. Here is a dancer who can eat up the stage as if it were his breakfast (which I imagine is hearty), who dashes off technical feats of dazzling brilliance that other dancers only dream about. He brims with humour and Puckish charisma (‘can I tell you a joke?’ he asks at the end of the interview), is possessed of boyish charm and smouldering looks, yet tempers these with an intelligence (shown in his love of poetry) that belies his age and suggests an adult head upon young shoulders. He is also, there is no doubt, a consummate performer.

It was his folk dance training that taught him about the stage. ‘I started it when I was four. I was appearing on the stage, I was a soloist and this helped a lot, because I was already learning how to express myself in a performance.’ He continued, dipping in to ballroom and modern dancing, but ‘then’, he exclaims excitedly, ‘we had visitors to our town, a ballet company dancing Don Quixote, and of course we all went to see it. After that, I said to my parents, “I want to do classical ballet!”’ – and, of course, he did. There were difficulties in marrying his folk training with ballet – ‘the issues were so different; in folk dancing I had to keep my feet parallel and in ballet I had to turn them out and this was certainly more tricky’ – but he overcame then and began his studies, first in the Ukraine, then (from the age of eleven) in Minsk. Upon his graduation last summer, he was invited by the Bolshoi Ballet director, Alexei Ratmansky, to join the troupe and since then he has taken on numerous important roles, most notably that of his own Damascene Conversion, Basilio in Don Quixote.
 

He has performed this role on prestigious opening nights with the Bolshoi in Washington and Munich; and in London (all being well) he will perform it once more. Has he had a favourite city so far? ‘I cannot say. I like to perform everywhere. The main thing is to have a public who supports you.’ How does he approach the role in each city? ‘I really do not think it depends on which city I am in; it depends on my state of mind and my mood. I suppose in this way it depends on the city, because I have new impressions and perhaps I will see something new that will change my attitude, but I would not think of changing the ballet in any way.’ What of the role; does he play it for pure comedy, or pure technique? ‘I don’t think anything can be done in the ballet purely for technique, because it is a work of art and a performance. There is character, there is plot and you have to produce your acting through it as well. Don Quixote is a very cheerful ballet and this is how I try to perform it. However, I also know that you should never go “over-the-“top when you try to dance comical works.’

Another comic role, which Vasiliev undertook within his first few months at the Bolshoi, is that of Colas in Ashton’s sun-lit ballet La Fille mal Gardee, recently staged by Alexander Grant at the theatre. ‘Of course the two ballets are very different, though both comical. In Don Quixote my character is full-blooded, hot headed and everything can be done almost “over-the-top”, because it is a Spanish ballet filled with passion and sometimes even aggression. But La Fille mal Gardee is an English ballet, it is more lyrical and there is so much more subtle laughter in this role. It is so different from Don Quixote where you have to fly as high as you can and pirouette as much as you can. In La Fille there is also so much technically to do, but you have to frame yourself within its beautiful and well-organized manner. This is the most important thing for a dancer: restraining yourself into the style of the work.’
 

At that moment he breaks off. ‘There is a poem. I remember some lines I can tell you.’ He pauses, thinking for a moment; suddenly he rattles of beautiful verses of Russian rhyming couplets and we all sit entranced. At its end, his interpreter reads: “The sense of measure is a very rare quality / It is an exceptional quality / Without this sense, Art will die / and Beauty will end.”

La Fille, he admits, he danced “with the hugest pleasure”, but it wasn’t without its challenges. The Ashton style, he found particularly difficult and when I ask about the ribbons and the works notoriously tricky “cats’ cradle”, his eyes seem to bulge at the remembrances of the hours he had to spend perfecting them. I mention that in a recent interview, the Royal Ballet’s Thiago Soares had admitted he found Ashton hard, because he had to count all the time. Had he experienced a similar problem? ‘No. I am not thinking about the counting because my teacher has a different approach. You have to express the music, not the count. How you hear the music is how you will dance.’ His teacher, with whom he learnt the role, is his now permanent coach, Yuri Vladimirov (Vasiliev had arrived in the company too late to receive any coaching from Grant himself). ‘To handle that stick’ (his eyes bulge again) ‘and the ribbons; these were the most difficult things for me.’

If, then, he were on a desert island and had to choose between Don Quixote and Fille, which one would it be? ‘Spartacus!’ he immediately responds with an ironic grin. ‘I am dancing this role in October. I love it, but I am already hurting at the knees!’ Spartacus is one of the pinnacles of the Bolshoi male repertoire and there are, at present, only five dancers who perform the role (including, very lately, Carlos Acosta). Vasiliev seems proud to join that illustrious group. ‘This is the hardest of all ballets because it is extremely difficult technically – it has very difficult lifts. The character has to be shown first as a slave and then gradually grow into a leader; but in parallel with this, you also have to be lyrical, because you have the long romantic duets with Phrygia. We decided, with my teacher Mr Vladimirov, that we would start early. This is why we are working on it even now.’
 

I suggest that he enjoys Spartacus because it allows him to explore his emotions on the stage. ‘Yes! It is interesting because you can express yourself in a much freer style. I do love classical ballet, but it restricts you to a certain manner and movement style, whilst the modern ballet allows you much greater expression.’ Under Ratmansky’s leadership the company is expanding its repertoire of modern ballets and Vasiliev was selected to dance in the second cast of Christopher Wheeldon’s Elsinore, premiered last February. ‘It wasn’t easy, because in school we didn’t have such an experience with working with a living choreographer on a new ballet. But here, Wheeldon was making changes, and then un-making them, and then re-instating them, and this was something quite difficult for me to accept. But I think I would like to work with Wheeldon again. It is certainly very interesting working with contemporary choreographers.’

And at age eighteen, we can only hope that Vasiliev will get to dance for many choreographers in future years, for he seems an artist continually on a quest to expand his knowledge and repertoire, to jump higher and spin faster. As a final question, I ask him which dancers he admires, and he rattles off the usual names – Baryshnikov, Vladimir Vasiliev, Lavrovsky, Yuri Vladimirov – and then he pauses, thinks a little and says, ‘Rolando Sarabia!’ I look slightly taken aback. He exclaims, ‘his pirouettes; oh he does the best pirouettes in the world!’ and offers me a mischievous smile. It is this cheeky grin that speaks volumes, for behind it, he seems to say, ‘but not for long!’ Ivan Vasiliev wants only to dance and only to be the very best in the world.