Prima ballerina Olga Lepeshinskaya dies

OLGA Lepeshinskaya, the Bolshoi Ballet's prima ballerina for three decades during the Soviet era, has died at the age of 92.

Nataliya Uvarova, a spokeswoman for Russia's Culture Ministry, said Lepeshinskaya died yesterday of an unspecified illness.

Lepeshinskaya was born to a noble family in Kiev in 1916. When she first tried to enter the Bolshoi choreographic school, she was rejected.

The school admitted her shortly afterward, in 1925, and Lepeshinskaya graduated in 1933, immediately joining the Bolshoi Ballet.

She was said to have been the favourite ballerina of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, and received the Stalin Prize on four occasions.

Lepeshinskaya recalled in an interview published in 2006 that Stalin once affectionately called her "dragonfly".