- published: 12 Dec 2008
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Alexander Borisovich Godunov (Russian: Александр Борисович Годунов; November 28, 1949 – May 18, 1995), nicknamed "Sascha" was a Russian-American danseur and film actor, whose defection caused a diplomatic incident between the USA and the USSR.
Godunov was born in Sakhalin, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union. Alexander began his ballet studies in Riga in 1958 in the class with Mikhail Baryshnikov. The two became friends and helped each other throughout their studies throughout their years there. He joined the Bolshoi Ballet in 1971 and rose to become premier danseur. His teachers there included Aleksey Yermolayev. In 1973, he won a gold medal at the Moscow International Competition.[citation needed]
After playing Lemisson, the Royal Musician in a 1978 Soviet adaptation of The Thirty-first of June by J. B. Priestley, Godunov became well known in the Soviet Union as a movie actor. His roles included Vronsky in Anna Karenina in 1974.
On August 21, 1979, while on a tour with the Bolshoi Ballet in New York City, Godunov contacted authorities and asked for political asylum. After discovering his absence, the KGB responded by putting his wife, Lyudmila Vlasova, a soloist with the company, on a plane to Moscow, but the flight was stopped before take-off while the State Department tried to determine whether she was leaving voluntarily. US diplomats arrived at the plane with a US passport ready for Vlasova, but she declined, so authorities allowed the flight.
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".