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
Ballet dancer English, it does not enjoy the same connotation as "ballerina". A regular male dancer in Italy is called a "danzatore", while ballerino usually denotes a principal male ballet dancer in Italy. In the English speaking world, boys or men who dance classical ballet are usually referred to as (male) ballet dancers. Often "ballerino" is used in English-based countries as slang. As late as the 1950s a ballerina was the principal female dancer of a ballet company who was also very accomplished in the international world of ballet, especially beyond her own company; female dancers who danced ballet were then called