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The Arts Intel Report

A Cultural Compass
For the World Traveler
A Cultural Compass
For the World Traveler

Finding Natasha

True crime meets the cutthroat world of 1970s Soviet ballet in this new five-part mini-series about Debbie Gayle, a promising young British ballerina who traveled to St. Petersburg (then Leningrad) to train with the Kirov, Russia’s top ballet company and academy. Her dream opportunity of cultural exchange quickly devolved, ending in an isolation ward and subsequent rescue by a woman named Natasha. Back in Britain, she did not speak of the experience. All these years later, Gayle’s son, the 30-year-old journalist Jake Warren, tells the twisted tale. —J.V.