MOSCOW — A dancer at the Bolshoi Ballet and two other men have confessed to carrying out an acid attack in January on the company’s artistic director, Sergei Filin, a crime that gripped Moscow and left one of Russia’s most revered institutions in turmoil, the police announced on Wednesday.

Police officials detained the three men on Tuesday.

Investigators said that they believed that the dancer, Pavel Dmitrichenko, hired two men to accost Mr. Filin outside his apartment building late on Jan. 17. As Mr. Filin punched in an entry code, the police said, a masked man called his name and tossed the contents of a jar of sulfuric acid at his eyes.

A video posted on a police Web site on Wednesday showed Mr. Dmitrichenko delivering a confession directly into a camera, looking bleary-eyed but calm. “I organized the attack, but not to the extent that it occurred,” he said. A police spokesman later told the Interfax news service Mr. Dmitrichenko was motivated by his “enmity” toward Mr. Filin, “based on his professional actions.”

The crime set off weeks of soul-searching in this ballet-mad city, especially because Mr. Filin said he was sure he had been attacked over a professional grudge. Detectives worked their way through the ranks of the Bolshoi, becoming so entranced by the world of the ballet that they began asking Mr. Filin for tickets, he said in a recent interview.