null

Recently Viewed

New

Like a Bomb Going Off: Leonid Yakobson and Ballet as Resistance in Soviet Russia by Janice Ross 9780300207637

No reviews yet Write a Review
$92.18

  Delivery: We ship to over 200 countries from the UK
  Range: Millions of books available
  Reviews: Booksplease rated "Excellent" on Trustpilot

  FREE UK DELIVERY: When you buy 3 or more books on Booksplease - Use code: FREEUKDELIVERY in your cart!

SKU:
9780300207637
MPN:
9780300207637
Available from Booksplease!
Availability: Usually dispatched within 4 working days

Frequently Bought Together:

Total: Inc. VAT
Total: Ex. VAT

Description

The powerfully moving story of the Russian Jewish choreographer who used dance to challenge despotism Everyone has heard of George Balanchine, but few outside Russia know of Leonid Yakobson, Balanchine's contemporary and arguably his equal, who remained in Lenin's Russia and survived censorship during the darkest days of Stalin. Like Shostakovich, Yakobson suffered for his art and yet managed to create a singular body of revolutionary work that spoke to the Soviet condition. His ballets were considered so explosive that their impact was described as "like a bomb going off." Challenged rather than intimidated by the restrictions imposed by Soviet censors on his ballets, Yakobson offered dancers and audiences an experience quite different from the prevailing Soviet aesthetic. He was unwilling to bow completely to the state's limitations on his artistic opportunities, so despite his fraught relations with his political overseers, his ballets retained early-twentieth-century movement innovations such as turned-in and parallel-foot positions, oddly angled lifts, and eroticized content, all of which were anathema to prevailing Soviet ballet orthodoxy. For Yakobson, ballet was a form of political discourse, and he was particularly alive to the suppressed identity of Soviet Jews and officially sanctioned anti-Semitism. He used dance to celebrate reinvention and self-authorship-the freedom of the individual voice as subject and medium. His ballets challenged the role of the dancing body during some of the most repressive decades of totalitarian rule. Yakobson's work unfolded in a totalitarian state, and there was little official effort to preserve his choreographic archive or export knowledge of him to the West-gaps that dance historian Janice Ross seeks to redress in this book. Based on untapped archival collections of photographs, films, and writings about Yakobson's work in Moscow and St. Petersburg for the Bolshoi and Kirov ballets, as well as interviews with former dancers, family, and audience members, this illuminating and beautifully written study brings to life a hidden history of artistic resistance in the Soviet Union through the story of a brave artist who struggled his entire life against political repression yet continued to offer a vista of hope.

Book Information
ISBN 9780300207637
Author Janice Ross
Format Hardback
Page Count 536
Imprint Yale University Press
Publisher Yale University Press
Weight(grams) 889g

Reviews

No reviews yet Write a Review

Booksplease  Reviews


J - United Kingdom

Fast and efficient way to choose and receive books

This is my second experience using Booksplease. Both orders dealt with very quickly and despatched. Now waiting for my next read to drop through the letterbox.

J - United Kingdom

T - United States

Will definitely use again!

Great experience and I have zero concerns. They communicated through the shipping process and if there was any hiccups in it, they let me know. Books arrived in perfect condition as well as being fairly priced. 10/10 recommend. I will definitely shop here again!

T - United States

R - Spain

The shipping was just superior

The shipping was just superior; not even one of the books was in contact with the shipping box -anywhere-, not even a corner or the bottom, so all the books arrived in perfect condition. The international shipping took around 2 weeks, so pretty great too.

R - Spain

J - United Kingdom

Found a hard to get book…

Finding a hard to get book on Booksplease and with it not being an over inflated price was great. Ordering was really easy with updates on despatch. The book was packaged well and in great condition. I will certainly use them again.

J - United Kingdom