COMING ATTRACTIONS

The Soviet Union’s most famous cultural institution is being driven apart by a bitter row over the implications of Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s call for a new workers’ democracy. The row finally became public last week when the Bolshoi Ballet’s artistic director and chief choreographer, Yuri Grigorovich, claimed that “democratization is turning into anarchy.” The immediate cause of his outburst was the circulation of a questionnaire among the dancers asking them to evaluate their teachers and directors. “This questionnaire was a copy of the one they use at the Ordzhonikidze machine-tool factory for evaluating the performance of the foremen,” Grigorovich fumed in the latest issue of Sovyetsklaya Kultura. “I believe that what has happened at the Bolshoi Ballet is deeply insulting for my colleagues and is deeply immoral.”