The artists worked mainly with the publishing houses Izogiz, Plakat, Sovietskaya Rossiya, and Sovietskii Khudozhnik, and in the famous creative workshop Agitplakat.
In the 1960s Uspensky started working with the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow, where he was acquainted with the ballet choreographer Yuri Grigorovich and the dancer Vladimir Vasiliev.
Over the next decades he worked on many ballets, including Petrushka, Spartacus, Angara, Ivan the Terrible, Leniniana (after Mayakovsky), Paganini, Chopeniana (les Sylphides), and Romeo and Juliet.
This opportunity to see the life of the theatre from the inside, drawing sketches and recording impressions, was decisive in creating a lifelong passion for the artist – the ballet.
With great enthusiasm he drew and painted ballerinas, danseurs and choreographers in a variety of situations - during and after rehearsals, at the barre, or resting, tired.