The ballet «Nureyev» directed by Kirill Serebrennikov was removed from the repertoire of the Moscow Bolshoi Theater. As director of the theater Vladimir Urin told Interfax, this decision was made because of the law on “LGBT propaganda”.
“Of course, as soon as the law was signed, the theater decided to remove this performance from the theater’s repertoire,” Urin said. In his opinion, the law «absolutely unequivocally discusses issues related to the promotion of non-traditional values.»
Back in May 2022, the Bolshoi Theater canceled performances of Nureyev without explanation, and Serebrennikov’s name was removed from the description of the ballet on the theater’s website (a copy of the page preserved in the web archive shows that back in March 2022 the director's name was mentioned in the description).
The premiere of the ballet «Nureyev» took place at the Bolshoi Theater in December 2017. The premiere was postponed due to a “long, detailed telephone conversation” between the head of the Urina Theater and Vladimir Medinsky, who then served as Minister of Culture. TASS, citing a source, then wrote that Medinsky saw “gay propaganda” in the performance, but soon the state agency changed the text of the publication.