Asaf Mikhailovich Messerer was a highly influential Soviet ballet dancer and ballet teacher. He was born in Vilnius, Lithuania. In 1919 he studied privately with Mikhail Mordkin, until Alexander Gorsky placed him in a class at the Bolshoi Ballet School, from which he graduated in 1921. He then joined the Bolshoi Theatre, where he became one of its most important principal soloists, a position he retired from in 1954.
