(Sophia Kishkovsky's article appeared in The New York Times, 5/2; via Pam Green.)

MOSCOW — Maya Plisetskaya, one of the greatest ballerinas of the 20th century and virtually the embodiment of the Bolshoi Theater for decades, died on Saturday in Munich. She was 89.

Katerina Novikova, the Bolshoi’s press secretary, said the cause was a heart attack. Ms. Plisetskaya and her husband and sometime collaborator, the Russian composer Rodion Shchedrin, had lived in Munich since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Ms. Plisetskaya, renowned for her fluidity of movement, expressive acting and willful personality, danced on the Bolshoi stage well into her 60s. Vadim Gayevsky, a dance historian and critic, once said she “began by creating her own style and ended up creating her own theater.”