This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

A British ballet dancer has been arrested in Moscow after reportedly confessing to possessing cocaine.

Oscar Frame, 21, who dances in Moscow with the Bolshoi Ballet, was detained by police in the centre of the Russian capital. He was said to have been acting suspiciously, REN TV reported.

“When asked if he had drugs on him, the young man declared that he had cocaine,” the television channel reported. “A wrapper was found on him with powder in it, which was sent for analysis.”

The Bolshoi confirmed that Frame had been detained but declined to provide further details. The British embassy said it would not comment on individual consular cases.

Penalties for drug possession are harsh in Russia and can include hefty prison sentences for those found guilty. Police in Moscow have not commented on the reports.

Frame, one of very few foreigners with the Bolshoi Ballet, studied at the Vaganova Ballet Academy in St Petersburg until 2017.

Nikolay Tsiskaridze, his teacher at Vaganova, told the Moskva 24 TV channel: “I don’t believe that Oscar was involved in this.” Tsiskaridze said Frame was one of the best students to have graduated from the academy.

After graduating from Vaganova, Frame received offers to dance with both the Mariinsky Theatre in St Petersburg and the Bolshoi Ballet. “The invitation from the Bolshoi was quite overwhelming,” he told the melmoth.co website in 2017.

Frame was born in London and started ballet dancing when he was 11. He trained at the Hampton Ballet Academy, in London, before being awarded a scholarship to the Kirov Academy of Ballet in Washington. He was twice turned down by the Royal Ballet Junior Associates.

The Bolshoi has had a number of scandals in recent years. It was alleged that young ballerinas were regularly subjected to sexual harassment by well-connected businessmen. Anastasia Volochkova, a former Bolshoi prime ballerina, said in 2017 that the theatre had become a “giant brothel”.

In 2013 a court in Moscow jailed a Bolshoi Ballet soloist for six years for organising an acid attack on the company’s artistic director.