Iron curtain descends on ballet as Helsinki and Moscow compete for young dancers

The Helsinki International Ballet Competition will feature mostly Western talent this summer, while Moscow’s Bolshoi Theatre prepares to host its own event with a record prize fund, reports Finnish broadcaster Yle.

Hannu Hyttinen, deputy chair of the Helsinki competition’s board, confirmed that geopolitical tensions have split the ballet world. “You could say the iron curtain has returned to ballet,” he said. “In practice, Western countries now have no business in Moscow.”

The Helsinki competition, running from early June, received a record 230 applications from 36 countries, with 76 dancers from 14 nations making the final cut—70 percent from Western countries. A notable surge in American participants reflects shrinking opportunities at home, according to Nina Ananiasvili, artistic director of Georgia’s State Ballet and a competition juror.

“Ballets in the U.S. are closing, so young dancers are looking for work in Europe,” said Ananiasvili, a former prima ballerina at both the Bolshoi and American Ballet Theatre. “European directors can easily travel to Helsinki to scout talent.”

Moscow’s event, billed as the “ballet Olympics,” claims participants from 30 countries, including Western nations, though no public list has been released. The top prize—7.5 million rubles (€88,000)—dwarfs Helsinki’s €20,000 award. The jury, led by Bolshoi star Svetlana Zakharova, a Putin ally, is drawn largely from Russia’s political partners and BRICS nations.

Ananiasvili dismissed the event’s political claims. “No competition has ever defined the world order in dance,” she said. “That’s absurd. These should be professional events, not ideological ones.”