A famed ballerina and her husband stiffed a Russian costume designer out of thousands of dollars for her work on their production of “The Nutcracker,” a lawsuit claims.

Ekaterina Rapay said that she typically gets $50,000 for six months work on a ballet, designing, constructing and embroidering costumes, but that Gelsey Kirkland and husband Michael Chernov wouldn’t pay.

Kirkland, 63, once partnered with Mikhail Baryshnikov and appeared on the cover of Time magazine in 1978. Her 1986 autobiography detailed her spiral into drugs, eating disorders and love affairs, including with Baryshnikov.

She and Chernov, also 63, leaned on their friendship with Rapay and “managed to extract Rapay’s work without payment by offering various excuses and deceptive means,” the designer claims in a
Manhattan Supreme Court lawsuit.

A Kirkland spokesperson declined to ­comment.