MOSCOW, March 18. /TASS/. Ex-principle ballet dancer of Bolshoi Theater, choreography teacher, merited artist of the Russian Federation Galina Petrova died in Moscow on Wednesday. She was 101, the press service of Bolshoi Theater said.

Galina Petrova was born in the city of Kerch in Crimea in 1913. She was educated as a ballet dancer at the Moscow Choreography School. During her student years the young, promising ballet dancer already danced ballet parts at Bolshoi. Upon graduation from the ballet school Petrova joined the Bolshoi ballet. She danced the part of Lilac Fairy staged by Asaf Messerer in 1936, and starred in the Flames of Paris ballet in 1937 staged by Vasily Viononen.

In 1942 when the Bolshoi ballet company was evacuated from Moscow to the city of Kuibyshev Petrova danced the part of Odette in the Swan Lake ballet staged by choreographer Alexander Gorsky. Petrova also stared in the Humpbacked Horse, Raimonda, Walpurgis Night ballets. Petrova was the first to perform dancers in the Ruslan and Lyudmila opera staged in 1948.

Since 1938 until 1957 Galina Petrova was a choreography teacher at the same Moscow ballet school from which she graduated herself. In 1953 she became a choreography teacher at Bolshoi, where she worked until 1989. She taught ballet skills to commencing Bolshoi ballet dancers many of whom gained worldwide fame: Sofia Golovkina, Raisa Struchkova, Marina Kodratyeva and the unforgettable Yekaterina Maksimova, who passed away before her celebrated ballet teacher.