Ballet's Magic Kingdom: Selected Writings on Dance in Russia, 1911-1925 »

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.

Akim Volynsky was a Russian literary critic, journalist, and art historian who became Saint Petersburg’s liveliest and most prolific ballet critic in the early part of the twentieth century. This book, the first English edition of his provocative and influential writings, provides a striking look at life inside the world of Russian ballet at a crucial era in its history.

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.

The New York Times - Toni Bentley

This is a fantastic book…The book is a must for anyone claiming a love of ballet, but it is also the perfect antidote for anyone…who still thinks ballet is merely a pretty spectacle with pretty girls (not that it also isn't). If you can wade through Volynsky's sometimes dense but always hugely entertaining and surprising text, you will never look at a toeshoe, a tiara or a tendu, not to mention an entire ballerina sporting all of the above, in the same way again. You will realize that you are looking, according to Volynsky, at a being truly not of this world, but here, for now, in this world, who can show you a kind of beauty and truth you will not find anywhere else—not in a book or painting, not in science, not in meditation, prayer or jogging, not in organic hibiscus juice and not even in death, should you survive it.

Introduction Akim Volynsky and His Writings on Dance

Pt. I Reviews and Articles

Dance as a Solemn Ritual (1911) 3

Coppelia (1911) 9

Tamara Karsavina: The Trial of Damis; The Nutcracker (1911) 12

Mathilda Kshesinskaya: Swan Lake (1911) 16

Schumann, Ballet, and Fokine (1912) 20

Eunice and Chopiniana (1912) 24

Errors of Creation: On Papillons and Islamey (1912) 26

The Little Dove: Harlequinade (1912) 29

The Russian Dance: Die Puppenfee (1912) 32

Raymonda (1912) 33

Coppelia (1912) 35

Vaganova's Variation (1912) 31

The Tsar Maiden: A New Production of The Little Humpbacked Horse (1912) 39

A Circle of Immovable Stars: Alexander Gorsky and Mikhail Fokine (1913) 43

Isadora Duncan: The Last Word (1913) 45

Anna Pavlova (1913) 46

Pavlova's Farewell Performance: La Bayadere (1913) 48

A Kaleidoscope of Attire: Still More on Konstantin Korovin (1914) 51

Elegy (1915) 53

Mikhail Fokine: Some Lines Toward a Polemic (1915) 58

La Jota Aragonese (1916) 60

My Miniatures: Swan Lake (1920) 62

Marius Petipa's La Bayadere (1922) 64

The End of the Season: Lida Ivanova (1922) 69

Two Schools of Classical Dance: Sleeping Beauty (1922) 70

Stravinsky's Ballets (1922) 74

The Birth of Apollo (1923) 77

What Will Ballet Live By? (1923) 84

A Wretched Housepainter: The Nutcracker (1923) 87

The Weeping Spirit (1923) 90

The Innovator: Mikhail Fokine (1923) 95

Don Quixote (1923) 98

Classical Attire (1923) 102

Naked, Barefoot, and Beltless (1923) 104

Swan Lake: The Swan in Music (1923) 107

Sleeping Beauty (1923) 110

Swan Lake: The Swan in Motion (1924) 115

Lida Ivanova (1924)119

Adrienne Lecouvreur (1924) 121

Tamara Karsavina (1924) 124

Pt. 2 The Book of Exaltations: The ABCs of Classical Dance (1925)

Principles of Classical Dance 131

Features and Forms 160

In the Center 171

Allegro 199

A Bird's-Eye View 219

Glossary of Names 263

Index 273