Svetlana Adyrkhaeva

Svetlana Dzantemirovna Adyrkhaeva (Светлана Дзантемировна Адырхаева; 12 May 1938 – 27 August 2023) was a Soviet and Russian Ossetian ballerina. She was made People's Artist of the USSR in 1984.

Biography
Adyrkhaeva was born on 12 May 1938 in a village of Khumalag in North Ossetia. She received ballet training at the Leningrad State Choreographic Institute and graduated from there in 1955. Three years later she danced Odette-Odile (in Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake) and won first prize for it. She was a soloist with the Chelyabinsk Opera and Ballet Theatre from 1955 to 1958 and the Odessa State Academic Theatre from 1958 to 1960.

In 1960 she became a soloist with the Bolshoi Ballet, remaining with the company until 1988. There, she became Galina Ulanova's disciple and also received further mentorship from Marina Semyonova. She participated in a ballet for two generations playing characters such as Aegina in Spartacus, and many others. From 1978 to 1981 she was member of the Russian Institute of Theatre Arts from which she graduated in 1980 and became a teacher there a year later. From 1995 to 2001 she was a teacher at the Dance Academy of the New Humanitarian University of Natalia Nesterova and then held the same position at the Bolshoi Theater from 2001.

Adyrkhaeva died on 27 August 2023, at the age of 85.