The January 2013 acid attack on Bolshoi Artistic Director Sergei Filin has cast a dark shadow over the workings of Russia's most esteemed cultural institution.

Tchaikovsky's now classic holiday ballet debuted in December 1892, but it was far from as popular in its debut as it is today. And it has gone through some interesting changes over the past 120 years.

It would be hard to imagine a ballerina’s life that was more storied than Matilda Kshesinskaya’s. Celebrated on world stages, the lover of tsars and princes, she lived to be 99 years old.