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
Vladimir Malakhov (dancer) Vladimir Malakhov (dancer) Vladimir Malakhov (born 1968 in Kryvyi Rih, Ukraine) was the artistic director of the Staatsballett Berlin (Berlin State Ballet) from its founding in 2004 until 2014. He is a former principal dancer with American Ballet Theatre. He began his dance training at the age of four at a small ballet school and remained there until continuing his training at the school of the Bolshoi Ballet in Moscow. From age ten on, he was under the tutelage of Peter Pestov and upon graduation in 1986 joined the Moscow Classical Ballet as that company's youngest principal dancer. In 1992,