Oleg Briansky (1929-2021). Belgian dancer and teacher of Russian descent

Oleg Briansky was born in 1929 in Brussels to a Russian émigré family. He was taught there by Russian teachers, as well as in Paris. In 1946 Briansky joined Roland Petit’s Les Ballets des Champs Élysées, and in 1951 performed in New York with Petit’s Les Ballets de Paris. In 1953, together with his wife Mireille Briane, a Paris-trained ballerina, he joined London Festival Ballet as a principal. From then until 1963, Briansky was a principal in London, Antwerp, Munich and the United States of America.

In 1963 the Brianskys settled permanently in New York, with Oleg moving from dancing to teaching as the result of a recurrent injury. As well as teaching in a number of venues in the America, in 1965 he and Briane founded and directed the prestigious Briansky Saratoga Ballet Center in Saratoga Springs, New York, which they ran for 42 years. Oleg Briansky died in 2021.