Zakharova and Fracci hit back at La Scala dancer’s anorexia claims: “she’s an unknown in search of publicity”

The anor­exia scan­dal, star­ted by Teatro alla Scala baller­ina Mari­afrancesca Gar­rit­ano, which has had echoes world­wide, at first led to indig­na­tion by the pub­lic and fel­low dan­cers alike when the theatre fired her for dam­aging the its repu­ta­tion. Then the tide star­ted to turn as vari­ous pro­fes­sion­als — doc­tors, teach­ers — with the com­pany and its school said that the accus­a­tions were unfoun­ded. Then came vari­ous state­ments from col­leagues which said that anor­exia was extremely rare.

Now two heavy­weight hit­ters have had their say. Zvet­lana Zakhar­ova, in Milan for Gis­elle which opens tonight, told the Cor­ri­ere della Sera’s Valeria Crippa,

It is a fake scan­dal cre­ated by an unknown in search of pub­li­city. Also at the Bolshoi there are those who try to profit from exag­ger­at­ing a story. Anor­exia in bal­let? At the Bolshoi it doesn’t exist, if you’re not in form you won’t sur­vive on stage: there is a nat­ural selec­tion among the stu­dents at the Bolshoi.”

And Carla Fracci in Italy’s Van­ity Fair commented,

Maybe [Gar­rit­ano] has some per­sonal prob­lems which don’t involve bal­let. It depends a lot on who you are. Any­way there are other problems. Alcohol for example: in com­pan­ies abroad espe­cially, you hear of food being replaced by alco­hol… beer, vodka, champagne. But also in this case, it is an excep­tion, not the rule… Gar­rit­ano should exam­ine her conscience.”

Fracci how­ever ended the inter­view by saying,

Fir­ing her isn’t right… It is absurd, trivial, ter­rible to fire someone.”

Photo: from left, Fracci in Sleep­ing Beauty, Gar­rit­ano in Swan Lake, Zakhar­ova in Cinderella