Ballerina Bounced For Being Big?

The Bolshoi Theater has fired one of Russia's best-known ballerinas for being…well, too Bolshoi.

The theater's management alleged that it couldn't find partners for her after male dancers complained she was too tall and fat to lift. The Bolshoi — which literally means "big" — comprises both an opera and a ballet company.

Anastasia Volochkova, who danced in "Swan Lake" and several other famed ballets, was fired Tuesday after a highly publicized, two-week rift over terms of her contract.

Russian media also suggested she was vain and too ambitious — acting too much like a diva, and drawing comparisons to tennis star Anna Kournikova, known more for her looks than her success on the court.

Volochkova, 27, dismissed as intrigue and lies statements by the Bolshoi management that she was too tall and heavy to find her a partner.

"A ballerina isn't measured by her height," Volochkova said on Channel One television.

According to the Russian media reports, Volochkova is 5 feet 7 and weighs 106 pounds. She told The New York Times she weighs 109, and a reporter for the newspaper measured her height as 5 feet 6.

On a Web site devoted to her, Volochkova was quoted as saying she loves ice cream so much "that I cannot imagine life without it." She also said she restricts herself to eating lowfat varieties, and adds that she hasn't touched meat since she was 7.

Yekaterina Novikova, a spokeswoman for the Bolshoi, said that the problem wasn't rooted in Volochkova's height or weight, but her skills.

"A tall ballerina could be easy to lift," Novikova told The Associated Press. "The problem is that male dancers complained of her height and weight and refused to dance with her."

The business daily Kommersant on Wednesday described the controversy as a "soap ballet."

Bolshoi's director general, Anatoly Iksanov, said he fired Volochkova after she had refused to sign a proposed contract.

The blond ballerina said she had refused to sign it because the Bolshoi offered her a four-month contract instead of a regular yearlong one and refused to schedule her performances.

Volochkova also had wanted to dance in three out of five performances of "Swan Lake" during Bolshoi's scheduled tour in Paris — a demand Iskanov called unacceptable.

"We have come to a dead end," he told Channel One.

Volochkova's partner, Yevgeny Ivanchenko, resigned during the summer after suffering an injury. Iksanov said that other dancers had refused to dance with Volochkova.

"I can't risk the artists' condition," Iksanov said, according to the daily Gazeta.

The daily Vremya Novostei on Wednesday played on the traditional symbol of Russia with the headline: "Not even bears could hold (her)."

Some newspapers have compared Volochkova's ambitions to those of Matilda Kshesinskaya, the famed Russian ballerina of the early 20th century and a favorite of Czar Nicholas II. Kshesinskaya was so powerful that she once forced the czar to fire the director of imperial ballet.

"Ballet lovers (had)…started making guesses on whether Iskanov would be able to hold onto his job for long," the newspaper Vremya Novostei said.

"But the cold-headed manager apparently remembered that we no longer have a czar and the president wasn't seen at Volochkova's performances — and fired her."

By Vladimir Isachenkov