The billionaires who saved the Bolshoi

There was a time when many thought the Bolshoi Ballet was on its last legs. Crippled by endemic infighting and a shortage of funds after the Soviet Union's collapse, the future of one of Russia's greatest cultural exports seemed unremittingly bleak.

But to the relief of ballet lovers worldwide, the Bolshoi has refused to disappear. And thanks to a dramatic infusion of money from newly wealthy Russians and foreign well-wishers, it has probably never been in better financial health.

From today, audiences in London will be able to see the scale of the transformation when the Bolshoi showcases what it says is the most expensive ballet ever produced. Le Corsaire, based on the poem by Lord Byron, is the jewel in the crown of the company's three-week run at the London Coliseum. The total cost of the production is a closely guarded secret. But a few behind-the-scenes figures for what is being called "Pirates of the Caribbean en pointe" give an idea of the scale.

Each of the 130 members of the full company will dance in the swashbuckling production of the 19th-century classic. The stirring score will be interpreted by the Bolshoi's own 80-strong orchestra while the assorted ranks of pirates, and slave girls will make 50 costume changes. The production culminates in a lavish shipwreck which draws on the latest in pyrotechnics and theatrical technology. The Moscow Times hailed the show as "the company's greatest hit in many a season". British dance critics, whose appetite was whetted by last year's summer run, are salivating in anticipation.

This return to the top is a remarkable tale of resurrection after years of instability and uncertainty about the future.

At the height of the Cold War, the Bolshoi had helped thaw relations by enrapturing Western audiences with the sheer power and grandeur of its performances. In Moscow, it wielded cultural and political power in equal measure.

But as Communism collapsed, Russian society was transformed by the rush of privatisation. Like many institutions that had been thoroughly Sovietised, both the Bolshoi's autocratic management and its dancers struggled to adapt to capitalism. Lured by better wages and the promise of greater artistic freedom, defections of dancers to the West - a trend that began in earnest during the years of glasnost and perestroika - snowballed, leaving the group woefully short of great talents.

Amid the chaos of the reforms, however, Boris Yeltsin, who was Russian president, did manage to throw the first of a series of unlikely lifelines to the cultural bastion of the old order. Yeltsin used his executive powers to ensure the Bolshoi would remain a treasure and set in train an ambitious £400m rebuilding programme that will see its theatre, which dominates the Russian capital's Theatre Square, reopen next year in a blaze of glory.

And as the government money started to flow, the new super-rich of post-Communist Russia began to contribute as well. Just as the nobility of 19th-century Russia madehuge donationsto createone of the golden ages of ballet, the new oligarchs also rallied to the aid of the company. Over the past 10 years, they have competed with Western corporations to makethe biggest donations. As a result, the Bolshoi is now one of the most lavishly funded arts organisations in the world.

This summer's tour of Britain is only the latest in a series of much-feted visits. London and the Bolshoi have always boasted something of a special relationship. The troupe's first international tour after the Second World War was to Covent Garden in 1956, when it received rapturous acclaim. One critic described the splendour of the performances as "an orgy of virtuosity". Russian names were soon tripping off the tongues of London's opera-going elite who were entranced by, in particular, the simultaneously muscular and graceful athleticism of the Bolshoi's male dancers.

Greats such as Yuri Vladimirov and Vladimir Vasiliev delighted audiences throughout the Cold War with their characteristically striking bravado and daring dances while women such as Raissa Struchkova and Galina Ulanova - who defected from the Kirov, the Bolshoi's great rival in St Petersburg - left ballerinas and spectators around the world stunned by their skill.

The stars of this year's production of Le Corsaire, first staged in Paris in 1856, are the prima ballerina Svetlana Zakharova and her partner, the fiery Ukranian Denis Matvienko. Generating perhaps even more excitement, however, is 18-year-old Ivan Vasiliev who is already drawing comparisons with Nureyev and Baryshnikov. Although he has only a minor role in Le Corsaire, he will take the lead beside Natalia Osipova, 21, in Don Quixote during the second week of the run. Unusually, he did not come up through the Bolshoi school, but caught the eye of the company's new foreign-trained artistic director, Alexei Ratmansky.

Ratmansky himself has earned praise for opening the company up to new ideas, not least in his incorporation of a more naturalistic dancing-style learnt at the Royal Danish Ballet, to the celebrated high-lifting style that has dazzled generations of Bolshoi lovers around the world.

The Bolshoi was created after a chance meeting between between Prince Peter Urussov and Michael Maddox, a theatre impresario. After a career managing productions at the Haymarket Theatre, Maddox moved to Russia and, in 1776 under the guidance of Prince Peter, a patron of the arts, founded Russia's first permanent theatre, the Petrovka, and later the Bolshoi.

Throughout the 19th century, when tsarist might was at its zenith, the Bolshoi became a byword for dazzling choreography and grandiose productions culminating in the premiere of Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake in 1877.

Although founded as an entertainment for the elite, the Bolshoi (and the Kirov) survived the Bolshevik Revolution by opening to the masses. While opera in Paris and Covent Garden remained prohibitively expensive for most people, in Russia, a ticket to the ballet could be bought on a labourer's wages and the dancers were treated as heroes.

A period of immense avant-garde creativity in the 1920s and 30s was stamped out by Stalin's purges, but by the time the Bolshoi toured Covent Garden in 1956, the Politburo had realised the company's potential as a cultural ambassador.

In the West, the arrival of the Bolshoi was an opportunity to see briefly behind the Iron Curtain and into a world where ballet had no limits.

The company's lavish contemporary productions are in keeping with its earliest traditions. Throughout its 230-year history, the Bolshoi's choreographers have often staked their reputations on the sheer size and lavishness of its productions. Even the company's name reveals its ambition - "Bolshoi" simply means big.

But amid the bitter in-fighting and uncertainty of the early 1990s, the future looked bleak. By the middle of the decade, as the financial link to the Kremlin unravelled, dancers were deserting in search of better pay and security in Europe and the US. The company was torn by a bitter power struggle between its artistic director, Vladimir Vasiliev, and its choreographer, Yuri Grigorovich, who had held the company in an iron grip for 30 years.

Grigorovich was known for his Stalinist quest for absolute control and obedience. Any dancer who questioned his policies or became too inquisitive about their options in the outside world was simply sacked or blacklisted.

When he first became artistic director and chief choreographer in 1964, the Bolshoi boasted talented choreographers such as Asaf Messerer, and Rostislav Zakharov. Over the years, Grigorovich purged them all. As artistic director, he staged only four original creations. Nevertheless, his sweeping, grandiose reinterpretations of the classics gave the Bolshoi the reputation its name implied, albeit with a clearly political and patriotic edge.

But once the Iron Curtain fell in 1989, Grigorovich's days were numbered. After a dancers' strike, the man who once seemed untouchable was eventually sacked, along with 15 of the company's leading dancers, by the general manager, Vladimir Kokonin. Vasiliev took over but was later fired by President Vladimir Putin, purportedly for failing to attend to the Bolshoi Theatre's notoriously leaking roof.

More sackings led to more turmoil. Four artistic directors passed through the Bolshoi's doors and Kokonin was ordered to quit by Mr Putin before Ratmansky arrived and restored a resemblance of continuity.

The company's lowest moment came during an ill-conceived and sparsely attended tour of Las Vegas. A more unsuitable venue for one of the world's greatest ballet companies could hardly be imagined but the Bolshoi was desperately short of cash and needed to widen its appeal. The plan, however, backfired. Critics derided what they saw as a noble company being forced to grovel for money in a trashy town.

Part of Ratmansky's formula for success has been to revive some of Grigorovich's most celebrated works such as the Soviet-era Spartacus which will feature in the London festival.

Beside the old will be the new, including the British premiere of Elsinore, a one-act ballet by the admired British choreographer Christopher Wheeldon. British audiences will also be able to enjoy Ratmansky's acclaimed re-working of The Bright Stream. The adaptation of Shostakovich's ill-advised 1935 send-up of collectivisation was meant to amuse Stalin but ended up earning his co-librettist a place in the gulag. No such risks are run in the new Bolshoi. The final scene of Le Corsaire ends with the sinking of the pirate ship. But the Bolshoi itself has never been more buoyant.

The Bolshoi Ballet will be performing for three weeks at the London Coliseum: Le Corsaire - tonight, tomorrow, Wednesday and 15 August; La Bayadere - 2, 3 and 4 August; Spartacus - 6, 7 and 8 August; Don Quixote - 9, 10 and 11 August; The Bright Stream - 16, 17 and 18 August