Ellen Barry, relocating from Moscow to Delhi for the New York Times, bids farewell to Russia with an incredible account of the claqueurs, the secretive middle-aged gang that runs the professional-applause racket at the Bolshoi:

Pavel Dmitrichenko, a star dancer at Moscow's legendary Bolshoi Ballet, has apparently confessed to orchestrating an acid attack that left the company's artistic director Sergei Filin with burns to his face and eyes—an attack possibly motivated by Filin's treatment of Dmitrichenko's girlfriend, another Bolshoi dancer.

Sex and the City creator Candace Bushnell's latest piece of sexy storytelling: Sex and the City Ballet and the Dissolution of Candace Bushnell's Marriage. After allegedly discovering that ballerino husband Charles Askegard was having an affair with ballerina Georgina Pazcoguin, Candace insisted on documenting the affair in her divorce papers, Page Six reports:

Sarah Lane, the American Ballet Theater soloist who served as Natalie Portman's dancing double for her Oscar-winning turn in Black Swan, claims that she did 95% of the dancing seen in the movie. Lane says she did all the fancy footwork and Natalie's head was digitally grafted onto her body in post production.

If this ballet dancer was looking to be booted from this ballet production then they most likely succeeded.

A ballet based on video games has been created for Svetlana Zakharova, the noodle-limbed star of the Bolshoi Ballet. The result is something that looks incredibly tacky...yet intriguing? Does anybody speak Russian?

Naomi Campbell is on Oprah today explaining that she is a rage-aholic who punches cameras because she had a sad childhood. Aw. And because she was too tall to be a ballet dancer. Luckily Oprah's here to fulfill her fantasies.

Skateboarding these days is all about ripping mad 360 nollie kickflip handstands—or something. In our minds, a skateboarder is an irreverent, rebellious figure...unless they're combining it with ballet! Then they just look ridiculous.

The Illinois Congresssman still hasn't accepted Barack Obama's offer to be his Chief of Staff, but it seems like he probably will. Would you like to learn more about Rahm Emanuel? You could start with this classic story:

The Daily News has its dance belt in a bundle upon the arrest of New York City Ballet principle dancer Nilas Martin, son of balletmaster Peter Martins, for possession of cocaine. Though we're more ABT fans than NYCB, a little perspective is needed. Namely, that pretty much every single ballet dancer includes cocaine in their nutritional regimen of Diet Coke and cigarettes. How else could Martins, at age 40, and with a history of excruciating bone spurs, maintain his ballon? How else do these ballerinas—jostling for a place on stage in an extremely cutthroat environment—maintain their weight and self-esteem? Clavicles like that don't define themselves on pure grit alone, people.