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| Nina Ananiashvili was born
in Tbilisi, Georgia on March 28, 1963. Sickly as a child, her parents urged her to take up
skating to strengthen her health. By age six, she was a ranked skater, and by the time she
was ten, she was Georgia's junior skating champion.
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That same year, she started ballet training in Tbilisi. Encouraged by her teachers, she soon abandoned skating for ballet. At the Georgian State Choreographic School, her teacher was Tamara Vikhodtseva; she also came under the tutorship of the renowned virtuoso Vakhtang Chabukiani. Her impressive progress was noted by dance authorities, who persuaded her parents to let her continue her training in Moscow. |
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| Thus, when she was thirteen, she
entered the Moscow Choreographic Institute, the teaching school of the Bolshoi Ballet. Her
first teacher in that venerable institution was Natalia Viktorovna Zolotova.
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| Among her first partners in her second
year at the school was Andris Liepa. Even before she graduated from the school,
Ananiashvili had already won the Gold Medal (Junior Division) at the prestigious Varna
International Competition (1980), and the Grand Prix (Junior) at the Moscow International
Ballet Competition (1981), with Liepa as her partner.
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