Ekaterina Sergeevna Maximova (Russian: Екатери́на Серге́евна Макси́мова; 1 February 1939 – 28 April 2009) was a Soviet and Russian ballerina of international renown.

Maximova was born in Moscow, Soviet Union. An artist who combined great technical prowess with piquant prettiness, Maximova enjoyed her greatest successes in Giselle, Don Quixote, Cinderella and The Nutcracker. On May 8, 1966, Maximova was one of the Bolshoi stars who danced in the last program presented at the old Metropolitan Opera House on Thirty-ninth Street and Broadway. Maximova was coached by the legendary ballerina Galina Ulanova.

Maximova performed with the Bolshoi Ballet from 1958 until 1980, often performing opposite her husband Vladimir Vasiliev. She and her husband gleaned wide exposure for their appearances in Franco Zeffirelli's filmed version of Giuseppe Verdi's opera La traviata (1983). Both performed in Spanish costume in the divertissements composed for the equivalent of Act II, scene 2, though she with much diminished technique in comparison to her husband.

Don Quixote ( /ˌdɒn kiːˈhoʊtiː/; Spanish: [ˈdoŋ kiˈxote] ( listen)), fully titled The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha (Spanish: El ingenioso hidalgo don Quixote de la Mancha), is a novel written by Miguel de Cervantes. The novel follows the adventures of Alonso Quijano, who reads too many chivalric novels, and sets out to revive chivalry under the name of Don Quixote. He recruits a simple farmer, Sancho Panza, as his squire, who frequently deals with Don Quixote's rhetorical orations on antiquated knighthood with a unique Earthy wit. He is met by the world as it is, initiating themes like Intertextuality, Realism, Metatheatre and Literary Representation.

Published in two volumes a decade apart, in 1605 and 1615, Don Quixote is considered the most influential work of literature from the Spanish Golden Age and the entire Spanish literary canon. As a founding work of modern Western literature, and one of the earliest canonical novels, it regularly appears high on lists of the greatest works of fiction ever published. In one such list, Don Quixote was cited as the "best literary work ever written".