Pop Culture References of Wizard101: Polaris – Aleksandr

Aleksandr – Alexander Godunov
https://wiki.wizard101central.com/wiki/NPC:Aleksandr
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Godunov

Thank you to Ashley D. for this one.

Aleksandr was once a dancer who studied under the famous Bearyshnakov. He needs your Wizard’s help when the other Gulag Guards steal his Tutu and Pointe Shoes.

Aleksandr is able to use your distraction of setting fire to a pile of scarp to escape his job at the Gulag. If you go to the Bolshoi Theater after this quest, you’ll see Aleksandr dancing on stage.

Alexander Borisovich Godunov (November 28, 1949 – c. May 18, 1995) was a Russian-American ballet dancer and film actor. A member of the Bolshoi Ballet, he became the troupe’s Premier danseur. In 1979, he defected to the United States. While continuing to dance, he also began working as a supporting actor in Hollywood films. He had prominent roles in films such as Witness and Die Hard.

On August 21, 1979, while on a tour with the Bolshoi Ballet in New York City, Godunov contacted authorities and asked for political asylum. After discovering his absence, the KGB responded by putting his wife, Lyudmila Vlasova, a soloist with the company, on a plane to Moscow, but the flight was stopped before takeoff. After three days, with involvement by President Jimmy Carter and Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev, the U.S. State Department was satisfied that Vlasova had chosen to return to the Soviet Union of her own free will and allowed the plane to depart. The incident was dramatized in a 1986 movie, Flight 222. Vlasova later said that while Godunov loved American culture and had long desired to live in the United States, she felt she was “too Russian” to live in the United States. The couple divorced in 1982.

Godunov joined American Ballet Theatre and danced as a principal dancer until 1982, when he had a falling-out with Mikhail Baryshnikov, the director of the company. A press release for American Ballet Theatre stated a change in the troupe’s repertoire did not provide Godunov with sufficient roles. Following his release, he traveled with his own troupe and danced as a guest artist around the world with a number of prominent ballet troupes.

Godunov also began working in Hollywood as a film actor. His acting roles included an Amish farmer in Witness (1985), a comically narcissistic symphony conductor in The Money Pit (1986) and as Karl the “terrorist” who wants to kill McClane for killing his brother in Die Hard (1988). In the mid-1990s he appeared in Canadian television commercials for Labatt Ice Beer.

The current list of all the (known) Polaris references can be found here.

Although I am well versed in Pop Culture references but I do not claim to have caught them all. Let me know your favorites in the comments and if I’ve missed one you caught, let me know so I can add it to the list.

Text for this article is excerpted from the linked wiki pages

Aleksandr image is from Wizard101, and is copyright of KingsIsle Entertainment

Alexander Godunov image is borrowed from Wikipedia. It is in the public domain.

Still from Die Hard (1988) is copyright 20th Century Fox

Image usage qualifies as fair use under US copyright law.