Gennadi Saveliev is not just a soloist at American Ballet Theater, but he's also a co-founder of the highly-esteemed Youth America Grand Prix competition.

Tell me about your training at the Bolshoi.
The school had a very different approach than schools here. The government paid for us so they could pick each student and they only picked the people they knew they could turn into ballet dancers.

Of course the schedules were totally crazy. We’d start in the mornings at 9:30—and I’m talking about young kids, like 10 years old—sometimes with rehearsals we’d finish around 8:30 or 9:00 at night. But we had a great school. It was huge. On the second floor there were about twenty ballet studios—they’d be in use for the whole day. The young kids would take class then go up to the third floor to take academics. Then, in a couple of hours they’d come back down and take another class, then go back up. We were running back and forth for nine years.

After all that, I got my first job with the Bolshoi Ballet Grigorovich. It was a touring group. I was with them for a little less than two seasons; we went to the United States, Japan, France, Belgium, England, Egypt... we toured to a lot of places.

And after touring with them, you eventually moved to the U.S.?
I kind of defected. Well, it wasn’t really a defection at that time, but I stayed on when the company left. Then I had a couple of jobs around this country. I worked in Las Vegas at Nevada Dance Theatre and in Oklahoma, Chicago, Los Angeles, Philadelphia...

What was it like working for those companies compared to touring with the Bolshoi?
Very different. At the Bolshoi, you’d have maybe three performances per week during the season, you knew the repertoire, you’d have rehearsals but not on the day of a performance. You might work up until 2:00 but that would be it.

Here at ABT, for example, on the day of a performance, you might be in rehearsal until 5:45. Our season is only 36 weeks so they try to squeeze in everything. It’s much more demanding, physically and mentally, because you work like crazy and then there’s the layoff, which can be something like three weeks. Sometimes you have to stay in shape, sometimes you have to rest and then get back in shape. It’s back and forth.

Are performing careers longer in Russia?
Definitely. Over here they have a saying, it’s not how long you dance, it’s how much you dance. It’s not the years, it’s the mileage. I am trying to deal with it as best I can. I’m 32, not so old in regular life, but in the ballet world it’s already getting up there.

Name something you wanted to get here that you weren’t getting in Russia?
Artistic choice. Here you can dance a greater variety of things. Now they’re starting to bring in choreographers over there and also doing some contemporary things. For example, the Bolshoi is going to do [Twyla Tharp’s] In the Upper Room.

Is there anything from Russia that you liked but are not getting here?
The schedules. And sometimes it’s difficult to take the classes here—it’s a different way of training. The teachers are trying to teach the young people to adjust to different styles. For me it’s easier to warm up on my own. But I did had a great teacher so I was lucky. This man was also Vladimir Malakhov’s teacher. In our school, he focused a lot on the basics—that was another weird thing. He was holding us back, in a way. We didn’t try any of the tricks in school. No double assemblé, no double cabriole. We spent a lot of time on the basics, like landing so you don’t hear it, like you see Malakhov do. But later, in the theatre, I was able to pick up the tricks very easily.

What made you think of starting the Youth America Grand Prix competition?
Larissa [Saveliev’s wife] wanted more. She stopped dancing and went into teaching. She loves the kids and was trying to give them as much as she could but there was always a limit.

When we were traveling to all those different places in this country, we had many friends from the Bolshoi who had opened up schools—we would go there to guest teach—but there was just no outlet for the kids and teachers in these studios.

I once got invited to be a judge at one of these jazz competitions, but there were no ballet kids. It was a lot of modern and tap—and how am I going to judge tap? So I asked them ‘Why did you ask me? Where are the ballet kids?’ And they told me ‘They don’t usually come.’ I asked why but they said they didn’t know. I asked around and found out the judges didn’t usually have a ballet background and sometimes the classes were held on carpeted floors, that kind of stuff. So we started thinking: what if there was a place like this but with qualified judges and good classes.

So we went to John Meehan, former director of the ABT Studio Company. It was during a five-minute break between rehearsals: ‘Okay, John, we have this crazy idea.’ We told him what it was and he said ‘Sounds good. Let’s do it.’ Apparently it was the right time and place because it evolved very quickly.

We have Semi-Finals in Mexico, Brazil, Japan, and, at the end of next summer, they will be in Italy for the first time.

Then the kids come to the finals in New York to compete for the scholarships—that’s our real value. Some kids may not score well, but they could still get a scholarship. We bring over directors of all the best schools and they know how to spot potential. They’ll say ‘Okay, this kid is going to be good in a couple of years, I want to get him.’

One kid joined ABT’s main company this year and he had come from a small school, didn’t really know what he was doing. When he came on stage at the competition he fell in almost every pirouette and jump. He was nervous. But the Royal Ballet director, Gailene Stock, said ‘I want him.’ By the scores, he was way down, but she still could tell he was good. Now he’s in ABT and doing well.

What do you see coming up next for you?
We’re about to do an ABT tour. The first week of February we’ll be in Paris, then we’ll be in London at Sadler’s Wells.

And long term, do you have any interest in teaching or choreographing after your performing career?
Not in choreographing. I don’t have the urge—and that kind of thing has to be inspired. But teaching, yes. I’m teaching now. When we’re on tours I get invited to teach master classes. It’s nice because it’s working with kids. It’s not always about what you can give to them, it also brings you back to your own schooling. Sometimes I think ‘Hmm. I don’t think I’ve done this step in the past two years.’ It makes you think.

So if you retire from performing it looks like you’ll be doing a lot of teaching...
...teaching—and with the Youth America Grand Prix, there is always a lot of work. That’s a big job. This past year I couldn’t help out at all, we were traveling and performing a lot with ABT. Larissa was pretty much on her own and it’s a lot of work—so there’s definitely going to be a place for me to help—[laughs] maybe licking the stamps or something like that.

Learn more about the Youth America Grand Prix competition at: http://www.yagp.org.