![]() | Ballet''s Magic Kingdom: Selected Writings on Dance in Russia, 1911-1925 Subjects: Ballet -- Russia (Federation) -- History and criticism; Ballet -- Russia (Federation) -- History -- 20th century; Ballet dancers -- Russia (Federation) -- History; The first translation of the writings of Akim Volynsky, the greatest ballet authority of early twentieth-century Russia Stanley J. Rabinowitz selects and translates forty of Volynsky's articles--vivid, eyewitness accounts that sparkle with details about the careers and personalities of such dance luminaries as Anna Pavlova, Mikhail Fokine, Tamara Karsavina, and George Balanchine, at that time a young dancer in the Maryinsky company whose keen musical sense and creative interpretive power Volynsky was one of the first to recognize. Rabinowitz also translates Volynsky's magnum opus, The Book of Exaltations, an elaborate meditation on classical dance technique that is at once a primer and an ideological treatise. Throughout his writings, Rabinowitz argues in his critical introduction, which sets Volynsky's life and work against the backdrop of the principal intellectual currents of his time, Volynsky emphasizes the spiritual and ethereal qualities of ballet. Stanley J. Rabinowitz is Henry Steele Commager Professor and professor of Russian, Amherst College, and director of the Amherst Center for Russian Culture. He lives in Amherst, MA. |
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