Bolshoi Ballet of censorship. It was the first time a show has been pulled in such a way since the collapse of the Soviet Union, sparking rumours about the motivation behind it. Today the Bolshoi Ballet remains one of the world's foremost ballet companies, in addition to being one of the largest, with approximately 220 dancers. The word "bolshoi" means "big" or "grand" in Russian. The company operates on a hierarchical system, similar to those used by other leading European ballet companies, with senior dancers ranked as principals, and descending in order of importance through lead soloist, first soloist, soloist and finally,
Russian phonology → 'flash'). However, the four-consonant limitation persists in the syllable onset. Clusters of three or more consonants are frequently simplified, usually through syncope of one of them, especially in casual pronunciation. Various cases of relaxed pronunciation in Russian can be seen here. All word-initial four-consonant clusters begin with or , followed by a stop (or, in the case of , a fricative), and a liquid: Because prepositions in Russian act like clitics, the syntactic phrase composed of a preposition (most notably, the three that consist of just a single consonant: к, с, and в) and a following word constitutes a