Yuri Soloviev is infinitely interesting both as a dancer and as a man. His friend Lisa Whitaker and I are moving ahead with our plans to do a book on him, an idea we’ve considered for the last half-decade. I met Lisa after my Ballet Review profile of Soloviev appeared in 2003. Tatiana Legat, Soloviev’s widow, asked her to get in touch with me to share the remarkable story of her befriending Soloviev in Australia in the depths of the Brezhnev era, and the events that ensued. Daughter of a French diplomat, Whitaker was a Russian Studies major in college at the time, working as a translator for visiting Russian culterati.
The book will incorporate the vast amount of research that she and I, individually and together, have done on his life. Soon after Peretstroika, Lisa sought out his family and his subsequent history, and she is godmother to his namesake grandson.