With the mighty Bolshoi’s London season underway, its star, Ekaterina Krysanova, tells about how she lives every role that she performs

the short window of a dancer’s life where you’re just old enough and just young enough for technique, artistry and hunger to come together in a magical triumvirate.

Krysanova is the only principal dancer to appear in all five shows in this season, starting with Don Quixote tonight, followed by classics Swan Lake and Le Corsaire, Soviet revival The Flames of Paris and a new Taming of the Shrew.

In a company of so many great dancers there is famously huge competition for roles but Krysanova is obviously doing something right. “I have a very large repertoire and maybe it’s not modest to say but I’m the only ballerina that has this range,” she says. Each part demands something different, from vivacious Kitri in Don Quixote to the ethereal Odette in Swan Lake. “When I am on stage each role is my favourite in that moment,” says Krysanova. “I just feel that role, I don’t perform it, I live that role.” But the closest to her own personality, she thinks, is Kitri. “She’s joyful, full of life. I don’t have to act at all.”

The competition for casting, and the disgruntled dancers who feel passed over for roles, was one of the themes in the revealing documentary Bolshoi Babylon, which went backstage at the company following the Filin attack, revealing internal fights and factions within the company.

“What a great happiness I have that I didn’t participate in that film,” she says, laughing. I was surprised at the honesty of the interviewees, I tell her. “How will you check if they are honest or not?” she counters. “This film showed a lot of jealousy, that many things are done in ballet through contacts, through money. Which is not exactly true.” So that’s not the case? “No,” she says, firmly. Then why has it been painted like that? “People like negative stories, scandalous stories, like Black Swan,” she says, referring to the Natalie Portman movie. “I want a film about ballet which is optimistic,” says Krysanova. “So that people have a positive impression of ballet. It’s an absolutely lovely profession, although it is probably one of the most difficult.”

But, I remind her, something truly terrible did happen at her ballet company, the attack on Filin. “Of course,” she says, “it was a nightmare. It was a really unique case and I hope it will never happen again. Quite a lot of time has passed [since the attack],” she says, “and life goes on.”

Life does indeed go on. Filin, whose eyesight is now permanently damaged, was sacked by nononsense theatre manager Vladimir Urin and replaced by steely former dancer Makhar Vaziev. But he’s now