Filin is the sixth artistic director at the Bolshoi since the legendary YuriGrigorovich, who led the dance company for three decades, resigned in 1995 after losing a protracted dispute with theater management.
By 2006, he had been thinking of quitting ballet "after a year or two", he told Russia 24, but the artistic director of the time, YuriGrigorovich, persuaded him after The Golden Age that ballet was his calling.
In Soviet days, incidents like these were never reported, even though everyone in the theatre world knew about the acrimony between cliques around well-known figures such as veteran Soviet choreographer YuriGrigorovich, or star dancers Vladimir Vasiliev and Maris Liepa.