MANAGER SACKED

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33740, 13 January 1975, Page 6

MANAGER SACKED

f.V.Z Press Assn— Copyright)

NEW YORK. Jan. 12.

The Soviet emigre dancers Valery and Galina Panov say" they dismissed their manager when they learned that he expected to make substantial profits from their scheduled American performances.

; “He was booking us into ; sports arenas rather than 'ballet theatres, and we began to have a feeling he iwas exploiting us as public figures instead of treating us las serious dancers,” they | said in papers filed in the State Supreme Court. The Panovs were answering a suit by Maxim Gershunoff, the impresario, to compel them to appear exclusively under his management for the next two years. ,Mr Justice Sidney Fine reserved his decision. The dancers were memIbers of the Kirov Ballet in Leningrad and unknown in .New York, ecept to a handful of ballet experts, until agitation to gain them permission to emigrate to Israel brought world-wide publicity. Both claim to be atheists, but Valery Panov is Jewish on his mother’s side of the family.

They finally received exit visas for Israel last summer and signed a contract with Gershunoff there last July 12. Under it, they gave five I performances in Israel, but ; Gershunoff said they balked iat performing in the United States.

Their first performance is now scheduled for the Spectrum Arena in Philadelphia on February 4. It was post-

poned until then from December after Panov claimed he had suffered a hip injury and could not dance for six weeks. They also have two shows scheduled for Los Angeles on February 8 and February 9.

The dancers said in an !affidavit that they were to be paid, as a team, $7600 for each performance and that Gershunoff was to get a 20 i per cent commission. Thev claimed the impresario turned demanding and not helpful and when their attorney. Mr Ellis Freedman. I told them Gershunoff exIpected to make money, they i instructed the lawyer to fire him.