And Then Came Dance

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And Then Came Dance

The Women Who Led Volynsky to Ballet's Magic Kingdom

Edited by Stanley J. Rabinowitz

Includes production and choreographic details about some of the oldest and most revered ballets in dance repertoire
Highlights the greatness of women in the arts in early twentieth-century Russia
Presents new translations of Volynsky's work

And Then Came Dance

The Women Who Led Volynsky to Ballet's Magic Kingdom

Edited by Stanley J. Rabinowitz

Description

Presenting for the first time Akim Volynsky's (1861-1926) pre-balletic writings on Leonardo da Vinci, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Otto Weininger, and on such illustrious personalities as Zinaida Gippius, Ida Rubinstein, and Lou Andreas-Salome, And Then Came Dance provides new insight into the origins of Volynsky's life-altering journey to become Russia's foremost ballet critic. A man for whom the realm of art was largely female in form and whose all-encompassing image of woman constituted the crux of his aesthetic contemplation that crossed over into the personal and libidinal, Volynsky looks ahead to another Petersburg-bred high priest of classical dance, George Balanchine. With an undeniable proclivity toward ballet's female component, Volynsky's dance writings, illuminated by examples of his earlier gendered criticism, invite speculation on how truly ground-breaking and forward-looking this critic is.

And Then Came Dance

The Women Who Led Volynsky to Ballet's Magic Kingdom

Edited by Stanley J. Rabinowitz

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Preface
A Note on the Text
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Akim Volynsky's Female Portraits

PART ONE: BODIES IN SITU

Russian Women: A Retrospective (1923)
1) Amoureuses and Druidesses
2) A Belated Druidess (on Lyubov Gurevich)
3) The Sylph (on Zinaida Gippius)
4) Pandora's Box (on Ida Rubinstein)
5) A Bouquet (on Lou Andreas-Salome and others)

Amor (co-authored with Lou Andreas-Salome, 1897)

The Mona Lisa (from Volynsky's book: Leonardo da Vinci (1898)

1) Nastasya Filippovna (1900)
2) The Infernal Woman (Grushenka) (from Volynsky's writings on Dostoevsky 1901)

Madonna (Introduction to the Russian edition of Otto Weininger's Sex and Character, 1909)

PART TWO: BODIES IN MOTION

The 'Russkaya' (Ekaterina Geltser) (1912)
The Young Generation (1912)
The Dancing of Isadora Duncan (1913)
The Dancing of Anna Pavlova (1913)
Three Ballerinas (Pavlova, Preobrazhenskaya, Kshesinskaya) (1913)
A Legendary Talent (Agrippina Vaganova) (1913)
The Russian Dancer (1913)
The Pupil of Mariya Savina (Olga Spesivtsva) (1913)
The Performances at Krasnoe Selo (1913)
The Broken Harp (Olga Preobrazhenskaya) (1913)
The Snowflake (Olga Spesivtseva) (1913)
Anna Pavlova (1914)
A Pre-eminent Talent (Mathilda Kshesinskaya) (1914)
Vain Precautions (Tamara Karsavina) (1915)
Kseniya Makletsova (1915)
Moscow and Petrograd (Geltser, Makletsova, et al) (1915)
Agrippina Vaganova's Farewell Benefit (1916)
The Testing of a Ballerina (Elena Liukom) (1916)
Yuliya Sedova's Farewell Benefit (1916)
Tamara Karsavina (1916)
Vera Karalli (1916)
Liubov Egorova's Final Benefit Performance (1917)
The Classical Dancer (1922)
Elsa Vill (1922)
Classical Fouette and Leonardo da Vinci's Contrapposto (1922)
Giselle and The Little Humpbacked Horse (Elena Liukom) (1922)
The Animated Flower (1923)
Ballet's Lily (Elizaveta Gerdt) (1923)
Kseniya Petrovna Makletsova (1923)
Elena Liukom (1923)
Our Moscow Guests (Viktorina Kriger) (1923)
The Gemstones of Benvenuto Cellini (1923)
On the Russian Ballet (1923)
The Fairy of Deer Park (Mathilda Kshesinskaya) (1924)

And Then Came Dance

The Women Who Led Volynsky to Ballet's Magic Kingdom

Edited by Stanley J. Rabinowitz

Author Information

Stanley J. Rabinowitz is Professor Emeritus of Russian at Amherst College.

And Then Came Dance

The Women Who Led Volynsky to Ballet's Magic Kingdom

Edited by Stanley J. Rabinowitz

Reviews and Awards

"Akim Volynsky, an idealist's idealist, abandoned philosophy for literature, then literature for Russian classical ballet. He wrote obsessively and compellingly about the female dancer as martyr, oracle, and cipher of an art he hoped might change the world. Rabinowitz has produced a mesmerizing, provocative collection of his writings, beautifully translated." -- Simon Morrison, Princeton University

"Praise for Ballet's Magic Kingdom: Selected Writings on Dance in Russia, 1911-1925 (2011): This is a fantastic book ... The book is a must for anyone claiming a love of ballet ... [Volynsky's text] is always hugely entertaining and surprising, you will never look at a toeshoe, a tiara or a tendu ... the same way again." -- Toni Bentley, The New York Times Book Review