Vladimir Vasiliev (dancer) Vladimir Vasiliev (dancer) Vladimir Viktorovich Vasiliev (Russian: Влади́мир Ви́кторович Васи́льев), (born April 18, 1940) is a Russian ballet dancer and choreographer from Moscow, Russia. He was a principal dancer with the Bolshoi Ballet and its director from 1995 to 2000. He was best known for his role of Spartacus and his powerful leaps and turns. Vladimir Vasiliev was named "God of the dance" and is regarded as a classical dancer on the same level as Rudolf Nureyev and Mikhail Baryshnikov. At the height of their careers, Vladimir Vasiliev and Ekaterina Maximova were the golden couple of Russian ballet. Vladimir Vasiliev
Julie Kent (dancer) Julie Kent (dancer) Julie Kent (born 1969) is an American ballet dancer; she was a principal dancer with the American Ballet Theatre from 1993 to June 2015. Her farewell role was Juliet (in Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet). In 2016, she was named the artistic director of The Washington Ballet. She was born Julie Cox in Bethesda, Maryland, to an American father and a mother from New Zealand who was a flight attendant and a former ballet dancer. Her early dance training took place under Hortensia Fonseca at the Academy of the Maryland Youth Ballet. She also studied at the American