Viktor Smirnov-Golovanov

Viktor Viktorovich Smirnov (real name Smirnov-Golovanov) is a Soviet and Russian ballet dancer and theater director, Honored Artist of the Ukrainian SSR (1981). He was born in Moscow, RSFSR, USSR in the family of director and screenwriter Viktor Fyodorovich Smirnov and Ekaterina Efimovna Smirnova (née Golovanova). In 1952 he graduated from the Moscow Choreographic School (class of N.I. Tarasov). In 1953-1974 he was a ballet dancer at the Bolshoi Theater. He was the author of the Russian text for the play "The Tale of the Soldier and the Devil" (1964). Even before the end of his career as an artist, he began to engage in theater directing and dance production. In 1968-1982 he worked in a creative union with Natalia Ryzhenko. In 1976-1988 he worked as the chief choreographer of the Odessa Opera and Ballet Theatre. In November 1988, together with Lyudmila Fyodorovna Nerubashchenko, he founded the first non-governmental ballet troupe in the USSR, the Viktor Smirnov-Golovanov Classical Ballet Theatre (known abroad as the Moscow City Ballet), and was its director and artistic director until the end of his life.