5 May 2007. Unquestionably the Maryinsky is the cradle of modern classical dance. It is where the Franco-Russian choreographer Marius Petipa created his Russian ballet miracle during the second half of the 19th century, and from where Michel Fokine and the impresario Serge Diaghilev internationalised Russian dance during the first quarter of the 20th century. But things change, even in a world as rooted in tradition as classical ballet. During the 1960s and into the 1970s the Maryinsky was led by Konstantin Sergeyev and his wife, Natalia Dudinskaya, but then, after various artistic as well as political crises, Oleg Vinogradov took over in 1977, beginning what he himself has called