Galiya Izmaylova

Galiya Izmaylova was born on 12 February 1923 in Tomsk into a Tatar family. After her father died in 1931 she moved to Tashkent with her mother. She started dancing at eleven: at an amateur contest she was noticed by professionals and invited to a ballet school that had just opened.

From 1935 to 1941 she studied at the Uzbek Republican Ballet School in Tashkent. In 1941, among the school's first graduates, she joined the company of the Uzbek Opera and Ballet Theatre (today the Alisher Navoi State Academic Bolshoi Theatre) and remained one of its leading soloists for many years. She danced 45 roles in all.

Her parts included Maria and Zarema in «The Fountain of Bakhchisarai», Kitri in «Don Quixote», Gulnara in «The Dancer», Tao Hoa in «The Red Poppy», Giselle, Carmen in Ravel's «Boléro», Aegina in «Spartacus» and Chundari in «Amulet of Love».

Izmaylova was also known as a performer of Uzbek folk dances — those of Fergana, Bukhara and Khorezm — and her repertoire included dances of other peoples of the East. In 1947 she won first prize for the Bukhara dance «Zang» at the World Festival of Youth and Students in Prague. In 1950 she received the Stalin Prize, second class, for her performance of Uzbek dances. According to Russian sources she toured 35 countries.

In 1958 she graduated from the directing faculty of the Tashkent Theatre and Art Institute and began working as a choreographer. She staged the dances for the operas «Dilorom» by M. Ashrafi (1958), «Prince Igor», «The Queen of Spades», «Eugene Onegin», «Faust», «Omar Khayyam» and «Zebunniso», and created dance miniatures such as «Munojot», «Tanovar» and «Dilkhiroj». She was chief choreographer of the Navoi Theatre in 1977–1985 and its choreographer from 1985. She staged about thirty productions and trained many pupils.

In the 1960s she was a deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the Uzbek SSR (6th and 7th convocations). She was named Honoured Artist of the Uzbek SSR in 1950, People's Artist of the Uzbek SSR in 1951 and People's Artist of the USSR in 1962, received two Orders of Lenin (1951, 1959) and the Hamza State Prize of the Uzbek SSR (1970). After independence she was awarded the Shukhrat Medal (1997) and the Orders of Dustlik (1998) and Mehnat Shuhrati (2003).

Galiya Izmaylova died in Tashkent on 2 October 2010, aged 87, and was buried at the Chigatay cemetery. A film, «Umrga teng raqs» («A Dance Equal to Life», 1984), was dedicated to her, and L. Avdeyeva published a book on her art in 1975.