"Conscription of dancers will deal a crushing blow to Russian ballet, and is unlikely to make the Russian army stronger," Anatoli Iksanov told RIA Novosti in an interview.
"The homeland cannot be protected with arms alone - something [the authorities] were aware of even in the Soviet era," he said. "The power and the beauty of the ballet arts, comprehensible to people across cultures, can do a lot for peace and social harmony."
Iksanov said it would also be economically irresponsible of the government to make talented ballet dancers eligible for army service as their professional training takes at least a decade and costs taxpayers' money. He said the measure may lead to massive talent drain.
The Bolshoi director's remarks came after the Defense Ministry said no exemptions and deferments would apply to performing art students and young professionals under a new conscription bill currently being considered at parliament's lower house, the State Duma.
The ministry-sponsored bill scraps nine of the 25 effective deferment and exemption categories so that the length of mandatory army service could be cut to 1.5 years from the current two in January 2007, and further down to one year in January 2008.
The issue was brought up in Wednesday's edition of The St. Petersburg Times, with the feature "Dancer's Career Threatened by the Draft" telling of a 22-year-old rising ballet star, Denis Savin, who fears his dancing career at the Bolshoi will be ruined if the bill becomes law.
"For an artist, a year off is equivalent to death," Savin said, adding that ballet dancers needed three weeks to get back in shape after being sick for a week.
He said the proposed exemption scrap would make the Bolshoi Theater devoid of young talent. "The Bolshoi is the face of Russia to the whole world. It would be like taking away Red Square. There would be a hole there."
The controversial conscription bill went through the Duma at first reading in April, and will be up for a second reading June 6.
