THENEWYORKER, MARCH 9, 2020 29
1
NEWCOLDWA R DEPT.
INSIDIOUS
W
hen the F.B.I. recently disclosed
that Vladimir Putin was meddling
in the American Presidential election
again, Irina Kolesnikova, a principal bal-
lerina with the St. Petersburg Ballet The-
Chinese god of wealth—announced,
“Trump said, ‘American-made.’ We back
him up!”
She exchanged holiday salutations
with the man. “What I just said there
literally means ‘Hope that you can make
more money.’ The Chinese love money,
it’s just a matter of fact.”
Yan spent her early childhood with
her grandparents in Shanghai. Her father
had been granted a visa to study sociol-
ogy in the United States, a rarity in pre-
Tiananmen China, and left before Yan
was born. Her mother followed two years
later. Yan didn’t make the move until she
was four. “I met my parents at the air-
port,” she said. Her next project, for A24,
is an adaptation of “Sour Heart,” Jenny
Zhang’s 2017 book of stories about Chi-
nese immigrants growing up in New York.
Yan has a lot of family in China, and
she visits often. “I spent a fair amount
of time in Beijing,” she said. “It was the
big, happening place. I was there for the
Olympics. There were these really cheesy
bars we would go to. I had a favorite
night club called Chocolate that felt like
it was run by the Russian mob. It was
very free, if that makes any sense.”
Outside Wu’s Wonton King, Yan
struggled to light some sparklers she had
just bought. An elderly passerby stopped
to cup his hands around Yan’s, shielding
the flame from the elements. “He says
it’s raining and it’s windy,” Yan said, when
he’d left. “There’s a metaphor in here
somewhere.” She produced a party pop-
per from a bag and began to twist. Tiny
hundred-dollar bills shot into the air. Yan
squealed and took a photo. Then she
headed off, shedding miniature Benja-
mins as she walked. Maybe there was a
metaphor in there, too.
—Alexandra Schwartz
year, she joined the St. Petersburg Ballet
Theatre, which Tachkin had founded
after a stint in the Soviet special forces.
“I was jumping with parachute. I was
running through the forest,” he said.
“It’s not the Soviet Union now,” Tach-
kin went on. “When the Western media
says there’s no freedom, that’s not true.
There’s freedom. You can see on the tele-
vision lots of programs.” (Both he and
his wife recalled, with puzzlement, the
way the Soviet authorities, when they
wanted to impose a news blackout, would
broadcast “Swan Lake” on a loop.) He
acknowledged that Russia did have “some
problems inside, of course. But which
country doesn’t?” His dream, he said, is
that Russia and the U.S. “become, maybe
not friends, but two countries who can
coöperate much, much better than now.”
He went on, “I do not think that the
United States is our enemy. I know many
American people. They are very friendly
people. We are also very friendly people.”
Since the birth of the couple’s daugh-
ter, five years ago, Kolesnikova said, she
feels very calm onstage, as if she is now
free to relax. She will turn forty next
month, and she has been reading books
about how to prevent bodily degeneration
by staying mentally fit. “All of a person’s
illnesses derive from their emotions,” she
said. “I want to continue dancing for many
years. I’m working from all angles—on
my body, as well as on my emotional state.”
“She thinks she’s more disciplined
than me,” Tachkin said, putting an elbow
into his frosting. His wife made a face.
“It’s just a jacket!” he said, dabbing with
a napkin.
Does he agree that Kolesnikova is
more Odette than Odile?
“No,” he said. “No.” His wife laughed,
and hid the lower half of her face in her
turtleneck.
“Swan Lake” does not always end
swimmingly. Sometimes the prince
drowns after discovering his error. But
St. Petersburg Theatre’s version ends in
triumph for the prince and his (correct)
bride—an ending written under Stalin,
according to the dance scholar Janice
Ross, because his regime demanded “op-
timistic art.” The moral, Kolesnikova
said, is that, “when people love each other,
they can win anything.” But also, she
added, perhaps the prince should have
paid more attention.
—Elizabeth Barberatre, was preparing to perform another
bit of malevolent Russian meddling—in
Tchaikovsky’s balletic saga “Swan Lake,”
at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. In
the ballet, Kolesnikova plays a pair of
look-alike polar-opposite beauties. First,
she is Odette, a princess cursed to remain
a swan until a suitor swears his love
to her. Then she is Odile, Odette’s evil
doppelgänger, who seduces her rival’s
would-be rescuer. Chaos ensues.
“I’m more like Odette,” Kolesnikova
said, the night before the première. She
was seated at a table at the Russian Sam-
ovar, the midtown vodka-and-caviar joint
that used to be the Frank Sinatra hang-
out Jilly’s. Her pale hair was clipped back,
and her angular cheekbones rested on
her hands. “But I prefer to dance Odile.”
If Odette is generically princess-
like—“trusting, proud,” Kolesnikova
said—Odile is a stranger bird, whose
motives (like Putin’s?) are mysterious,
explained Konstantin Tachkin, Koles-
nikova’s husband and the founder of the
St. Petersburg Ballet Theatre. “She can
be seductive, or she can be—I don’t know
this word in English,” he said.
Kolesnikova picked up her phone
and consulted Google Translate. “Insid-
ious!” she said. (She speaks limited En-
glish.) Her favorite scene, she went on,
is when, as Odile, she throws a bouquet
in the prince’s face, joyous at having de-
ceived him into pledging his devotion
to the wrong tutu. “I get satisfaction
from that,” she said.
A waitress came over. Tachkin never
eats after 6 p.m., and he ordered a slice
of Napoleon cake with ninety minutes
to go. Kolesnikova, who as a rule does
not eat dinner, ordered hot water with
lemon. The couple is specific about their
sleeping arrangements, too. The night
before, they had rejected four rooms, in
two hotels, before grudgingly settling on
a suite at the downtown-Brooklyn Hol-
iday Inn. The Marriott near the Brook-
lyn Bridge had been “let’s call it. .. not
fresh,” Tachkin, a slight, blond man with
a preppie haircut, said. A Hilton, he added,
would have been out of the question.
BAM had been advertising Kolesnikova
as “Swan Lake”’s headliner. “I have many
responsibilities,” she said, carefully. “When
you have your name on the poster, it’s
very hard for my head.” She was last in
this country in 1998, as a student, to per-
form at BAM with her ballet school. That