Nikolay Tsiskaridze

Who is Nikolay Tsiskaridze?

Nikolay Tsiskaridze PAR, also spelled Ziskaridze, was a premier dancer of the Bolshoi Ballet. Ethnically Georgian, he was born in Tbilisi on 31 December 1973. He joined the Moscow Ballet School in 1987 and was admitted into the Bolshoi Ballet in 1991. After winning applause of true ballet legends Galina Ulanova, Marina Semyonova and Yuri Grigorovich, he became the youngest person to be named a People's Artist of Russia. He received the State Prize of the Russian Federation in 2001 and 2003 and the Prix Benois de la Danse in 1999.

In 1992 Tsiskaridze joined the ballet company of the Bolshoi Theater . The then artistic director Yuri Grigorovich saw Nikolai at the graduation exam and said: “This Georgian, we take him.” At the theater he had the good fortune to enter the class of prominent ballerina Marina Semyonova. The legendary Galina Ulanova also assisted him, and as Nikolai says, became his second mother. She taught him to give meaning to every single movement and gesture and to fill the dance with emotion. “Don’t shout with your hands when dancing a prince.”, she used to say. “A noble man only needs to bow his head to make his wish fulfilled immediately.”