Valery Panov, ballet dancer and refusenik, dies at 87

Panov wrote that his father, an industrial supervisor who had taken on the Communist ethos of the era, “had developed into a genuine antisemite who hated all Jews, including himself”. When Panov began dancing professionally, he realised his family name – Shulman – was too Jewish-sounding for an “important theatre” and at 20 he adopted the surname of his Russian first wife, dancer Liya Panova, as a “solution to the Jewish problem.”

His early career blossomed after studying Russian ballet in Leningrad and Moscow, beginning at Leningrad’s Maly Ballet where he gained popularity for his charisma and strength in lead roles he created himself. He caught the eye of American critics during his first US tour in 1959 as part of Khrushchev’s state visit.

In 1964 Panov was hired by the Kirov Ballet, where he created roles in Leonid Yacobson’s Land of Miracles (1967), Oleg Vinogradov’s The Mountain Girl (1968), and Vladimir Vasilyov’s Creation of the World (1971), in which he portrayed the Devil to Mikhail Baryshnikov’s Adam.

During this time Panov met his second wife Ragozina – then just 17 – whom he married after three years despite a number of disputes with her openly antisemitic mother.

It was Israel’s Six-Day War of 1967 that altered his view of Judaism and paved the way for his emigration to the Jewish State; of that conflict, Panov later reflected: “Jews were defending themselves instead of cowering, [and] I recognised my relationship to the beatings they had suffered so long.”

After Panov discovered that Israel offered emigration visas to half-Jewish citizens like himself, he and his non-Jewish wife applied to move there in 1972 out of a desire for artistic and religious freedom, a decision that was championed by prominent Western actors and writers as well as Jewish activists who were protesting Brezhnev’s denial of such freedoms.

It was only after leading artists in the UK threatened to boycott a London visit by the Bolshoi Ballet that Panov and his wife were permitted to emigrate. When Panov arrived in Israel in 1974, he announced: “I have come home.”

Shortly afterwards the husband-and-wife duo performed before an audience of 3,000, including Prime Minister Golda Meir, and were met with an 11-minute ovation.

The Panovs proceeded to dance, both in Israel and across Europe, with Panov becoming principal dancer and choreographer with Berlin Opera Ballet from 1977 to 1983 and creating several ballets including Cinderella, Sacre du Printemps and The Idiot. In 1994 Panov created a ballet about the notorious Dreyfus affair titled Dreyfus – J’accuse to music by the Russian Jewish composer Alfred Schnittke at the State Opera in Bonn, Germany.

Panov and his second wife divorced in 1993, after which he married the much younger Israeli dancer Ilana Yellin and settled in Ashdod, founding the Panov Ballet Theatre and an arts centre. Yellin tragically died by suicide in 2009, just 18 months after giving birth to their child.

Panov, who died on 3 June 2025, is survived by his sons with his second and third wives and a daughter with another partner.

Eliana Jordan

​Valery Panov (Valery Matyevich Shulman),born March 12 1938; died June 3 2025