Russian Personalities

People well-known in art, sport, film, fashion

Category Archive: Music and dance

Peter Tchaikovsky – outstanding Russian composer

Peter Tchaikovsky – outstanding Russian composer

Peter Tchaikovsky – outstanding Russian composer


Peter Tchaikovsky is an outstanding Russian composer.
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky was born on May 7, 1840 in Votkinsk, located on the territory of modern Udmurtia. His father was Ilya Petrovich Tchaikovsky was an engineer. The mother of the future celebrated composer was Alexandra Andreevna Assier. In Votkinsk, his father received a large house with servants and even his own army, consisting of one hundred Cossacks. This house was often visited by nobles, young people from the capital, English engineers and other venerable personalities.
The boy was the second child in his family. He also had elder brother Nikolai, younger brother Ippolit and younger sister Alexandra. Their father could play the flute, and the mother played the piano and the harp, as well as she had a very beautiful voice.
The boy was fond of music since his early childhood and also he liked poetry. Peter wrote numerous verses in French. In addition, he tried to learn everything about the life of Louis XVII.
In 1848, the Tchaikovskys moved to Moscow, as Ilya Petrovich retired and intended to find a private service. Literally a couple of months later the family moved to St. Petersburg. There, Pyotr Ilyich continued to study music, and also became acquainted with ballet, opera and symphony orchestra.
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Sergei Lazarev – famous singer

Sergei Lazarev

Sergei Lazarev – famous singer


Sergei Lazarev is a singer, dancer and actor. He was born on April 1, 1983 in Moscow, Russia. His parents divorced when the boy was quite small and his mother brought up two sons alone. At the age of four the future singer was engaged in gymnastics. Sergei became interested in music in his childhood and performed with various children’s ensembles. Also the boy acted in the theater by Boris Pokrovsky.
In 1995, Lazarev became a soloist of the children’s collective Neposedy, the same group in which Yulia Volkova and Lena Katina (t.A.T.u.) met each other. The group participated in various well-known TV shows and festivals.
You know, in September 1996, Sergei won the first prize at the contest Bravo Bravissimo in Italy.
In 1999, the future celebrity entered the Moscow Art Theatre School and graduated from it with honors in 2003.
Lazarev’s career began with a group Smash!. Aspiring singer created it together with his friend Vlad Topalov. Vlad’s mother advised to record an aria from the popular musical Notre-Dame De Paris as a birthday present for Topalov Senior.
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Polina Butorina – young Russian Star

Polina Butorina – young Russian Star

Polina Butorina – young Russian Star


Polina Butorina is a young Russian singer, actress, TV presenter and model.
The girl was born on March 29, 2002 in Moscow. In 2006 she entered music school. Polina sang in the children’s choir and in 2008 she began to play the piano. At the age of 8 Polina performed the song Christmas in the TV program Song as a Gift on My Joy channel. In 2010 her song Polite Song was recorded and the music video for it was broadcast on the same channel.
In 2012 Polina entered Yana Rudkovskaya’s STARS Academy. The first result of the work was the single Nobody’s Crying, which was released in October 2012. Evgeni Plushenko took part in the filming of the music video, which immediately took the first place in the Top Ten Children with Jana Rudkovskaya on Muz-TV.
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Gordei Kolesov – Russian prodigy

Gordei Kolesov

Gordei Kolesov


Gordei Kolesov, six-year-old Russian prodigy, has become a star in China. His performance in one of the entertainment programs on China Central Television, CCTV-1, has excited the whole country. The jury was fascinated by the unusual Russian boy. The most influential newspaper of the country, Renmin Ribao, wrote about the winner and Xinhua News Agency made a report about him.
The boy speaks five languages: Chinese, English, Spanish, French, and, of course, Russian.
During the TV show the boy read the poems by Su Chi, an ancient Chinese poet of Sun dynasty. Also he said that he knew 555 Chinese idioms (Chengyu) –fixed expressions.
The boy is not only fluent in Chinese, but also is an expert in Chinese characters (hieroglyphs). Most recently, he won Readers’ Choice Award in Chinese hard pen-2014 Calligraphy Contest. One of the judges said that Gordei writes characters better than many Chinese children.
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Zhenya Belousov – Star Boy

Zhenya Belousov pop idol

Zhenya Belousov – idol of millions of girls


Evgeny Belousov, better known as Zhenya Belousov, was a Soviet and Russian pop singer and idol of millions of girls, popular in the USSR and Russia in the late 1980s – early 1990s.
The boy was born on September 10, 1964 in the village. The family moved to Kursk when Zhenya and his twin brother Sasha were about two months old. The twin brother was born a few minutes earlier, and therefore Zhenya was considered the youngest child in the family. The boys had elder sister Marina. The boys were very creative: Sasha was fond of drawing, and Zhenya loved music.
In high school, Evgeny started playing in the school band.
The boy didn’t serve in the army because of health problems. In childhood the future singer became a victim of an accident and had traumatic brain injury.
In the mid-1980s Evgeny played in one of Kursk restaurants, where he was noticed by Bari Alibasov, the head of the popular band Integral. Alibasov offered him to become a bass guitarist in the band.
In 1987, Belousov began his solo career. The first producers of the singer were Viktor Dorokhov and his wife Lyubov Voropayeva. Thanks to these people, he became popular. It is interesting that the producers changed the age and marital status of the singer to enable all the girls of the USSR to fall in love with a new idol. During the time of cooperation with Dorokhov and Voropaeva, the singer released two albums.
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Mikhail Baryshnikov – Silent genius

Mikhail Baryshnikov

Mikhail Baryshnikov – Silent genius


He does not strive to dance better than others, but he wants to dance better than himself. And he was named the greatest ballet artist of the last century. By the way, he is one of the Russians who influenced the fate of the world ballet.
Mikhail Baryshnikov was born on January 27, 1948 in Riga. The family moved to Latvia, where Mikhail’s father, a Soviet officer, was sent to serve.
When he was 10 years old, the boy said that he wanted to study at the ballet school.
The boy’s life wasn’t easy. He grew up in a large communal apartment and when he was 12 years old his mother committed suicide. She supported Mikhail’s decision to go to the Riga Choreography School. Few years Baryshnikov spent with his father, but then he married again and Misha began to live an independent life. He moved to Leningrad and since that time he did not communicate with his father.
The boy studied at the Leningrad School of Choreography, the famous school of Russian ballet. And soon he became a soloist of the famous Mariinsky Theater.
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Sofya Skya – Sofya Arzhakovskaya

Sofya Skya actress and Beauty Queen

Sofya Skya – actress and Beauty Queen


Sofya Skya is a Russian ballet dancer, an American film actress and Mrs. World 2006 winner. Her real name is Sofya Arzhakovskaya.
The beautiful girl was born on August 12, 1987 in St. Petersburg into a family of a dentist. Her grandmother Emma Shchetinina was a famous harpist and teacher, Honored Artist of Bashkortostan.
The little girl liked dancing very much. At the age of ten, she joined the children’s studio Music Hall, where she began to earn her own money. At the age of 12 Sofya moved to Ufa, where she entered the Nureyev Russian State Ballet Academy. 16-year-old girl joined the Bashkir State Opera and Ballet Theatre as a Corps de Ballet member. You know, she participated in Swan Lake, La Bayadere, Snow White, Esmeralda, Raymonda.
At the age of eighteen Sofya became the first Russian beauty ever won Mrs. World pageant. In total, she has won five beauty pageants, including Russian Grace contest. On June 17, 2005 Sofya opened the third Viennese Ball in Moscow. After the victory Arzhakovskaya moved to the United States to continue her studies.
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