"AN Austrian ballet star sacked after posing for a set of erotic photographs has turned the tables on the boss who fired her.
She has revealed that he, too, was once in a risque photoshoot.
Karina Sarkissova, 27, an award-winning prima ballerina at the Vienna State Opera, was dismissed when pictures of her dancing nude were published in local magazines.
The Russian-born dancer retaliated by revealing that Manuel Legris, the ballet's director, posed for erotic art photographs in the 1980s with both male and female dance partners at the Paris Opera.
Sarkissova handed the pictures of a naked Legris in various poses to the newspapers, saying she had been inspired by his example.
'He took artistic liberties and wouldn't allow them to be censored by anyone and he published illustrated books with erotic but artistic pictures,' Sarkissova wrote in an open letter to the press.
The ensuing scandal and charges of double standards have caused a sensation at the opera house, best known for its productions of classics such as Swan Lake and The Nutcracker.
Editorials in leading German-language papers sided with the ballerina and accused the opera's management of behaving like 'Pavlovian dogs'."
Since public opinion supported her, she got her job back. More important, though, she took a stand. My favorite line comes a little later, when she talks about the offending photoshoot (hers) and describes her body as a "symbiosis of strength and aesthetics." That will make it into a poem, at least by way of epigraph.
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