"I am not interested in sporting diamond tiaras on stage, or having my point shoes cooked and eaten by my fans," muses Natalia Osipova, referring to two old ballet anecdotes."Ballet has evolved and the ballerina figure with it. The world around us offers new challenges, new stimuli and new opportunities, and I believe that it is the responsibility of every artist to be constantly ready to respond to these. There is simply no reason, nor time, to perpetuate century-old clichés, such as the remote, semi-divine figure of the 19th-century ballet star."
How strange and wonderful for a Russian ballerina, now a Royal Ballet principal, to say this. Read the interview with her in The Spectator, which calls her "the last in an illustrious line of Russian artists — Galina Ulanova, Maya Plisetskaya, Ekaterina Maximova, and Galina Mezentseva are among the ones she mentioned — who were and still are legends but never 'divas.'
Osipova says: "Their art, and their devotion to their art in particular, was and still is at the core of my artistic creed. I was also inspired by their eclecticism, and their desire to engage with diverse choreographic styles and genres."