ROANOKE TIMES 
                      Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times

DATE: Monday, November 4, 1996               TAG: 9611040125
SECTION: VIRGINIA                 PAGE: C-2  EDITION: METRO 
DATELINE: PARIS
                                             TYPE: NEWS OBIT

BALLET MASTER EUGENE POLYAKOV DEAD AT 53

Eugene Polyakov, a Bolshoi-trained ballet master, or choreographer, who assisted Rudolf Nureyev at the Paris Opera Ballet, has died. He was 53.

Opera officials could not immediately be reached, but the daily newspaper Le Monde said Polyakov died Oct. 24. The paper gave neither his cause nor place of death.

Polyakov was born in Moscow on April 27, 1943, and trained at the Bolshoi Ballet before leaving the Soviet Union in 1976 to perform at the Fenice in Venice, Italy. A year later, he formed his own dance company there, Viva la Danza.

In 1978, Polyakov moved to Florence to direct the Teatro Communale, where he stayed until Nureyev summoned him to Paris in 1983.

Polyakov and Nureyev ``spoke the same language, the same language of the body,'' Le Monde said. Polyakov returned to Florence after Nureyev's death in 1992.

- Associated Press

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