Her mother, actress Rachel Messerer, was arrested in 1938 and imprisoned for a few years, then held in a concentration camp together with her infant son, Azari [ru].

As a soloist, Plisetskaya created a number of leading roles, including Juliet in Lavrovsky's Romeo and Juliet; Phrygia in Yakobson's Spartacus (1958); in Grigorovich's ballets : Mistress of the Copper Mountain in The Stone Flower (1959); Aurora in The Sleeping Beauty (1963); Mahmene Banu in The Legend of Love [ru] (1965); Alberto Alonso's Carmen Suite (1967), choreographed especially for her; and Maurice Béjart's Isadora (1976).

A fellow dancer said that her dramatic portrayal of Carmen, reportedly her favorite role, "helped confirm her as a legend, and the ballet soon took its place as a landmark in the Bolshoi repertoire".

Having become "an international superstar" and a continuous "box office hit throughout the world", Plisetskaya was treated by the Soviet Union as a favored cultural emissary.

[5] According to ballet scholar Jennifer Homans, her father was a committed Communist, and had earlier been "proclaimed a national hero for his work on behalf of the Soviet coal industry".

[5][17] Ezrahi writes, "the intrinsic paranoia of the Soviet regime made it ban Plisetskaya, one of the most celebrated dancers, from the Bolshoi Ballet's first major international tour", as she was considered "politically suspect" and was "non-exportable".

On one occasion, to gain the attention and respect from some of the country's leaders, she gave one of the most powerful performances of her career, in Swan Lake, for her 1956 concert in Moscow.

[6] Subsequently, the travel ban was lifted in 1959 on Khrushchev's personal intervention, as it became clear to him that striking Plisetskaya from the Bolshoi's participants could have serious consequences for the tour's success.

[11] Although she toured extensively during the same years that other dancers defected, including Rudolf Nureyev, Natalia Makarova and Mikhail Baryshnikov, "Plisetskaya always returned to Russia", wrote historian Tim Scholl.

"[14]: 239 Although she lacked the first-rate training and coaching of her contemporaries, Plisetskaya "compensated" by "developing an individual, iconoclastic style that capitalized on her electrifying stage presence", writes historian Tim Scholl.

[14] Her very personal style was angular, dramatic, and theatrical, exploiting the gifts that everyone in her mother's family seemed to possess.... Those who saw Plisetskaya's first performances in the West still speak of her ability to wrap the theater in her gaze, to convey powerful emotions in terse gestures.

Her continual rocking and swaying at certain points, rhythmically timed to the syncopation of the orchestra, create a mesmerizing effect that demonstrated an absolute control over every nuance of her body, from the smallest toe to her fingertips, to the top of her head.

"Sarah Montague[21] Plisetskaya created a number of leading roles, including ones in Lavrovsky's Stone Flower (1954), Moiseyev's Spartacus (1958), Grigorovich's Moscow version of The Stone Flower (1959), Aurora in Grigorovich's staging The Sleeping Beauty (1963), Grigorovich's Moscow version of The Legend of Love (1965), the title role in Alberto Alonso's Carmen Suite (1967), Petit's La Rose malade (Paris, 1973), Bejart's Isadora (Monte Carlo, 1976) and his Moscow staging of Leda (1979), Granero's Maria Estuardo (Madrid, 1988), and Julio Lopez's El Reñidero (Buenos Aires, 1990).

Her dancing partner in Swan Lake states that for twenty years, he and Plisetskaya shared the world stage with that ballet, with her performance consistently producing "the most powerful impression on the audience".

Critic Walter Terry described one performance: "What she did was to discard her own identity as a ballerina and even as a human and to assume the characteristics of a magical creature.

[25] Novelist Truman Capote remembered a similar performance in Moscow, seeing "grown men crying in the aisles and worshiping girls holding crumpled bouquets for her".

[29] Dancer Olympia Dowd, who performed alongside her, writes that Plisetskaya's dramatic portrayal of Carmen, her favorite role, made her a legend, and soon became a "landmark" in the Bolshoi's repertoire.

[35] In October that year, she performed with Rudolf Nureyev and Mikhail Baryshnikov for the opening night of the season with the Martha Graham Dance Company in New York.

[36] Plisetskaya's husband, composer Rodion Shchedrin, wrote the score to a number of her ballets, including Anna Karenina, The Sea Gull, Carmen, and Lady with a Small Dog.

[37] Plisetskaya and Shchedrin spent time abroad, where she worked as the artistic director of the Rome Opera Ballet from 1984 to 85, then the Spanish National Dance Company from 1987 to 1989.

[38] After the Soviet Union collapsed Plisetskaya and her husband lived mostly in Germany spending summers in their house in Lithuania and occasionally visiting Moscow and St. Petersburg.

[42] Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko extended condolences to her family and friends: The passing of great Maya Mikhailovna [Plisetskaya] whose creative work embodied the whole cultural era is an irretrievable loss for Russian and world art.

[43]In choosing Carmen, Mitroshin emphasized not only Plisetskaya's physical prowess, grace and beauty, he put a big exclamation point after character... Look at those gorgeous arms, hands, legs.

[51]Plisetskaya's tour manager, Maxim Gershunoff, who also helped promote the Soviet/American Cultural Exchange Program, describes her as "not only a great artist, but also very realistic and earthy ... with a very open and honest outlook on life".

[14]: 202  Novelist John Steinbeck, while at their home in Moscow, listened to her stories of the hardship of becoming a ballerina, and told her that the backstage side of ballet could make for a "most interesting novel".

He asked her if she wouldn't mind creating some ballet poses to help him with his current project, a mural for the new Metropolitan Opera House in New York, which would show various images representing the arts.

[54] MacLaine's brother, actor Warren Beatty, is said to have been inspired by their friendship, which led him to write and produce his 1981 film Reds, about the Russian Revolution.

He first met Plisetskaya at a reception in Beverly Hills, and, notes Beatty's biographer Peter Biskind, "he was smitten" by her "classic dancer's" beauty.

Gershunoff, Plisetskaya's manager at the time, recalls that on the day of the funeral, most of the theaters and concert halls in New York City went "dark", closed in mourning and respect.

Replacing the usual thunderous audience applause at the conclusion, there was complete silence betokening the feelings of a mourning nation in the packed, cavernous Metropolitan Opera House.