The Tragic Love Story of Alexander Godunov: Secrets and Scandals Unveiled by His Only Wife, Lyudmila Vlasova.

Eleonora Flerova

2 hours ago

Lyudmila Iosifovna worked with figure skaters Grischuk and Platov, Anisina and Peizera, Averbukh and Lobacheva…

On May 18, 1995, the life of the brilliant dancer Alexander Godunov ended. One of the most handsome and tall (height 186 cm) premieres of classical ballet died in exile in the United States from alcoholism and total loneliness. He was only 45 years old.

In recent years, under the patronage of one of his mistresses, actress Jacqueline Bisset, he starred in Hollywood films (including playing the terrorist Carl in Die Hard) and gave choreography lessons. Despite the wide coverage of Godunov’s scandalous flight to the West (he asked for political asylum during the Bolshoi tour in the States), many secrets remain in his biography to this day. Some of them tried to open the only wife of Alexander – 81-year-old ballet dancer and choreographer of ice dancing Lyudmila Vlasova.

– Lyudmila Iosifovna, the last time you saw Godunov was in August 1979, she has long been married to someone else. Time cures. Or maybe they have already forgotten Alexander?

– Doesn’t heal. In the case of Sasha, time does not matter. Our love is eternal. He is with me forever – and here, and now, and then, and beyond. Sasha is my infinity.

– Dancer, choreographer and professor Mikhail Lavrovsky said that “Mila for Godunov was more than ballet, more than Motherland, more than life. He couldn’t breathe without her and that’s why he died.”

Misha is my classmate. He told the truth. I know that Sasha loved me very much.

– You had to choose – living in a foreign land with your beloved husband or returning home to your mother. When you chose your mother and asked to be sent to the Union, many did not believe that after seven years of a happy marriage you could not support your husband. They accused the representatives of the USSR of holding you by force…

– If everything happened again, I would do the same. Become the cause of misfortune and suffering of loved ones? No … And I loved Sasha very much and love. Before him, I had a very good first husband – the artist of the Bolshoi Theater Stanislav Vlasov. They lived in luxurious conditions. Slava was willingly allowed to go abroad and me with him. But we are already tired of it so that it is beyond words. Slava treated me very well. But Sasha Godunov appeared. Seven years younger than me (in those years it was considered abnormal). Our love arose at first sight. Mikhail Baryshnikov urged me, asked me not to leave Slava for Godunov. But I didn’t listen to him.

– Was Baryshnikov jealous of the tall and handsome Godunov?

– Don’t think. And I don’t want to think so. They grew up together, studied together, became friends, shared their most intimate things with each other … Baryshnikov accepted Sasha into the troupe of his theater in America, and then fired him. I don’t know how or why. I was not there. And after that conversation, when Misha urged me not to marry Godunov, I never discussed Sasha or my personal life with him again. Yes, they were different in every way. Two different planets.

chance to change

– There is a version that Godunov was framed during those ill-fated tours in the USA. They got him drunk, and alcohol had a bad effect on him, they photographed him in an indecent form and forced him to ask for political asylum.

“Unfortunately, that’s how it was. And framed, and drunk, and used, and forced. But he, like every person, had a chance to change everything.

– American beloved Godunov – movie star Jacqueline Bisset – said that he did not miss his homeland, but yearned only for his wife Mila. Others say that Godunov had a strong nostalgia for his homeland.

Yes, the nostalgia was terrible. In America, he felt like a stranger and useless to anyone. After Sasha’s death (a year and a half before that, he bequeathed to scatter his ashes over the Pacific Ocean. Whether this was done is not known. Godunov’s secretary and assistant, Arlene Medan, ordered his body to be cremated without an autopsy or witnesses. And, taking the urn, hastily disappeared. ) I dated Bisset. On her initiative. She said that she wanted to see Mila, whom Godunov could never forget. Our meeting was organized by Ilze Liepa. In my apartment. I was embarrassed to invite Jacqueline to my place. She also told me that Sasha was happy in America, but he missed me very much … And I thought: “How can a person who yearns be happy?” Nevertheless, I really liked Jacqueline. We went to church together, prayed for the repose of Sasha’s soul. A symbolic grave of Godunov was organized at the Vvedensky cemetery (next to the burial place of his beloved teacher Alexei Ermolaev) … We brought there a consecrated handful of earth. They hugged goodbye, and Jacqueline repeated again: “Sasha loved you all his life …” And fate is fate!

4 facts about the genius of Russian ballet

1. Godunov started dancing late – at the age of nine. In the same group with Mikhail Baryshnikov. Until the age of 17, Godunov and his friend remained of the same short stature. But literally in one summer, Sasha stretched out by 15 cm and overtook Misha by two heads.
2. A kopeck piece in the center of Moscow, where she lived with Godunov, after his flight, Vlasova (they were divorced in absentia) was put up for sale. The actor and psychotherapist Alexander Rapoport wanted to buy it. But the deal fell through at the last minute.
3. Godunov dreamed of children. But neither Vlasova nor Bisset gave birth to him, not wanting to sacrifice their careers. Both never became mothers.
4. Shortly before his death, Alexander flew from Los Angeles, where he lived, to Riga. I met my mother and older brother there. Mom said that she “no longer has a son”, and her brother demanded to buy him a car and give him a large sum of money. Godunov was almost killed by this attitude of his relatives. He left the entire inheritance (more than $ 1 million) to his mother, brother and nephews.