Kseniya Ryabinkina

Bolshoi ballerina; Marina in Mera Naam Joker · 1945–

Kseniya Ryabinkina, born in Moscow on 4 September 1945, is a Soviet ballerina from a family of dancers: her mother danced at the Bolshoi, and her elder sister Elena became a prima ballerina, at 17 the youngest Odette on the Bolshoi stage. Raj Kapoor cast her as Marina, the Russian trapeze artiste in the second chapter of Mera Naam Joker (1970). Hers is described as the most prominent role any Russian artist has had in an Indian film. In 2016, forty-six years after the film, she returned to Mumbai for Raj Kapoor's birth anniversary.