From her earliest days as a student at the Vaganova ballet school in St Petersburg, it was clear that Alla Sizova possessed a remarkable talent. So much so that Sizova, who has died aged 75, was cast in the taxing role of the Queen of the Dryads in Don Quixote even before she had left the school. For her graduation she partnered her fellow student, Rudolf Nureyev, in the duet from Le Corsaire, a performance that gained both young dancers immediate attention from critics and ballet lovers alike. A film shot at the time shows the fluency of Sizova’s dancing, her pretty feet, the beautiful use of back and arms and her stupendous jump.
Both dancers graduated into the Kirov company as soloists, bypassing the usual period in the corps de ballet. The management clearly regarded Sizova and Nureyev as an ideal partnership and they were often cast together. But off stage there was mutual dislike and when, as a mark of favour, the pair were given a two-roomed flat, with the unspoken idea that proximity would result in marriage, Nureyev was furious. In fact, they lived separately in the property: Nureyev with his sister, Rosa, and Sizova with her mother.
Sizova’s first full-length part at the Kirov was in the Nutcracker; the 14 major roles she learned in the following three years included the leading female part in Igor Belsky’s Leningrad Symphony (1961), which revealed new depths in her interpretations. She danced all the great classical leads and was particularly admired as Aurora in the Sleeping Beauty, a role which she performed for the first time at Covent Garden during the company’s tour, also in 1961. As the critic Clive Barnes wrote, she “charmed as much as excited”.
This was the tour on which Sizova lost her most frequent partner when Nureyev left the company in a blaze of publicity, defecting to the west at the end of the Paris season. From then on she was mainly cast with Yuri Soloviev, one of the greatest dancers of the 20th century and a true virtuoso with an impeccable classical style. Together they formed an impressive partnership, some of which was filmed.
Sizova was born in Moscow, the daughter of Ivan Sizov and his wife, Ekaterina. Shortly afterwards the family moved to Leningrad, but after the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, Sizova, her mother and her sister were evacuated to the Urals, while her father remained in Leningrad throughout the siege. At the end of the second world war the family was re-united, and Alla began attending a dance class held at her school after her academic lessons were over for the day.
Her ability was obvious for all to see and it was suggested that she should audition for the Vaganova school. She was accepted and became a pupil of the distinguished teacher Natalia Kamkova. Joining the Kirov as a first soloist, she soon rose to the rank of principal and maintained her position among a generation of unusually gifted dancers. In addition to her technical and expressive qualities, she possessed what her contemporary, the ballerina Natalia Makarova, described as “an extraordinary radiance” that made her performances outstanding.
A serious back injury sustained during the 1960s kept Sizova off the stage for two years, but she made a triumphant return with no loss of technique, and with even greater emotional depth. Her last appearances in London were in 1970 when she partnered Mikhail Baryshnikov, then making his debut in the west. He defected in Canada in 1974.
Sizova retired from dancing in 1988, making her final appearance in Chopiniana. She then took up a teaching post at the Vaganova school. In 1991 she accepted the invitation of Oleg Vinogradov to move to the US and teach at the Kirov Academy of Ballet of Washington DC. There she was a much-loved teacher.
Sizova married the television producer and director Mikhail Serebrennikov in 1965. He died of an aneurysm in 1980, when their son, Ilya, was six. Ilya accompanied her to the US, but eventually returned to live in St Petersburg, where he drowned in an accident in 2004. Upon his death, Sizova returned to Russia to live with her sister, Nina, refusing all offers to return to teaching or coaching, and seldom seeing either colleagues or pupils.
In recent years she developed Alzheimer’s disease, and four months before her death was diagnosed with cancer. She is survived by her sister and a niece.
• Alla Ivanovna Sizova, ballet dancer, born 22 September 1939; died 23 November 2014
