A Life Well Danced Maria Zybina S Russian Heritage Her Legacy Of Classical Ballet And Character Dance Across Europe

This book explores the relationships between dancers and their teachers, and classical ballet pedagogy through the life of Maria Zybina. It was inspired by the author’s direct connection through Zybina and her teachers.

Nina Anisimova was born in 1909 in imperial St Petersburg. One of the most renowned character dancers of the Stalinist period, she won her way into the hearts of her audience over many decades. Yet few knew that her exemplary career was a fragile construct built atop a dark secret. In 1938, at the height of the Great Terror, Nina vanished. Only a handful of people knew that this famous dancer had not only been arrested by Secret Police, accused of being a Nazi Spy, but sentenced to forced labour in a camp in Kazakhstan. There, her art would become a salvation, giving her a reason to fight for her life when she found herself without winter clothes in temperatures of minus 40 degrees. Over the coming weeks, Nina's husband, Kostia Derzhavin, began to piece together what had happened to his wife. What he decided to do next was almost without precedent - to take on the ruthless Soviet state to prove her innocence. He would put himself in danger to save the woman he loved. Dancing for Stalin is a remarkable true story of suffering and injustice, of courage, resilience and love.

Alla Osipenko is the gripping story of one of history's greatest ballerinas, a courageous rebel who paid the price for speaking truth to the Soviet State. She studied with Agrippina Vaganova, the most revered and influential of all Russian ballet instructors, and in 1950, she joined the Mariinsky (then-Kirov) Ballet, where her lines, shapes, and movements both exemplified the venerable traditions of Russian ballet and propelled those traditions forward into uncharted and experimental realms. She was the first of her generation of Kirov stars to enchant the West when she danced in Paris in 1956. But dancing for the establishment had its downsides, and Osipenko's sharp tongue and marked independence, as well as her almost-reckless flouting of Soviet rules for personal and political conduct, soon found her all but quarantined in Russia. An internationally acclaimed ballerina at the height of her career, she found that she would now have to prevail in the face of every attempt by the Soviet state and the Kirov administration to humble her. In Alla Osipenko, acclaimed dance writer Joel Lobenthal tells Osipenko's story for the first time in English, drawing on 40 interviews with the prima ballerina, and tracing her life from Classical darling to avant-garde rebel. Throughout the book, Osipenko talks frankly and freely in a way that few Russians of her generation have allowed themselves to. Her voice rises above the incidents as unhesitating and graceful as her legendary adagios. Candid, irreverent, and, above all, independent -- Osipenko and her story open a window into a fascinating and little-discussed world.

There have been wonderful books about dancing, and superbly evocative ones about old Russia: but here the two themes are fascinatingly wedded. For these are the memoirs of the prima ballerina assoluta of the imperial Russian ballet, Mathilde Kschessinska (the Princess Romanovsky-Krassinsky), with whom, at her first appearance, the Tsarevitch Nicholas fell in love. As a dancer she had few rivals: apart from her marvellous technique she had a star personality, and was adored by the public. At the height of her fame she appeared in London with Diaghilev's company and danced with Nijinsky: she preferred, however, to dance in Russia, and for twenty years she was the adored darling of the great world of Petersburg. After the Revolution, when she was living as an emigre in the South of France, Diaghilev begged her to dance for him in his new Paris season, but to no avail. Kschessinska's memoirs fall roughly into three parts: the glittering fairy-story of her life as prima ballerina in Russia; her flight during the Revolution; and the era in which she established herself as a teacher of the highest rank. It is an extraordinary self-revelation of a great dancer and an utterly human person.

"A century of classical ballet danced by 33 stellar exponents of Russian style, from the days of Petipa and Pavlova to the era of Baryshnikov, Makarova, and Nureyev"--Jacket.

Mathilde Kschessinska, Prima ballerina of the St. Petersburg Imperial Theatre, tells her life story in these moving and dramatic memoirs. Born in Imperial Russia in 1872, Kschessinska came from a family of dancers and was trained in ballet. Noted as a great talent from youth, Kschessinska's destiny was shaped by her debut performance: she won the praise of visiting Russian royalty and met the young man who was to become the future Tsar Nicholas II. The two became romantically involved for three years, until the young Grand Duke was betrothed to the future Empress Alexandra. Perhaps the most dramatic and harrowing passages of this memoir date to the Russian Revolution: the sudden plunge of the nation into chaos and anarchy, and the danger the author was in as a known associate of Russia's royal family, is told. By sheer fortune, Kschessinska and her husband were able to escape to France, but not after a series of close calls amid the melee of Russia's devastating civil war.

A history, covering the period 1770 to 1965.

Mathilde Kschessinska, Prima ballerina of the St. Petersburg Imperial Theatre, tells her life story in these moving and dramatic memoirs. Born in Imperial Russia in 1872, Kschessinska came from a family of dancers and was trained in ballet. Noted as a great talent from youth, Kschessinska's destiny was shaped by her debut performance: she won the praise of visiting Russian royalty and met the young man who was to become the future Tsar Nicholas II. The two became romantically involved for three years, until the young Grand Duke was betrothed to the future Empress Alexandra. Perhaps the most dramatic and harrowing passages of this memoir date to the Russian Revolution: the sudden plunge of the nation into chaos and anarchy, and the danger the author was in as a known associate of Russia's royal family, is told. By sheer fortune, Kschessinska and her husband were able to escape to France, but not after a series of close calls amid the melee of Russia's devastating civil war.