Ballerina loses 'overweight slur' lawsuit

A Moscow court today rejected a 30-million-rouble (€874,587) lawsuit by ballerina Anastasia Volochkova over a newspaper report that implied she had been sacked by the Bolshoi Ballet because she was overweight, news reports said.

The judge found that the article in the newspaper Argumenty I Fakty, which quoted Bolshoi general director Anatoly Iksanov, did not damage her reputation as she claimed, according to the news agency ITAR-Tass.

The Bolshoi fired Volochkova in September, but reinstated her in November after she won a lawsuit contesting the dismissal.

In the article at the centre of the claim, Iksanov was quoted as saying Volochkova’s partner Yevgeny Ivanchenko had injured himself during a performance with her – and “I don’t consider it necessary to risk the health of our dancers, taking into consideration the form that Volochkova is in now.”