Synopses & Reviews
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.
Review
"Revolutionary Russian-Jewish choreographer Leonid Yakobson comes alive in Janice Ross's Like a Bomb Going Off." Vanity Fair
Review
"Utterly engrossing . . . A landmark study . . . Like a Bomb Going Off is by turns infuriating and uplifting; it will leave its readers maddened by the predictable fear of imagination shared by all totalitarian regimes but also thrilled that stories of courage such as Yakobson's are possible in such regimes at all." Open Letters Monthly
Review
"Ross is a passionate advocate, ardently evoking his surviving ballets and why his work, and his courage, meant so much to Soviet audiences." The Independent
Review
"[A] labor-of-love account of a man who no doubt deserved far more recognition for his courage, innovation and indomitable spirit than he received." New York Times
Review
"Illuminating . . . Ross is right: The story of this artist, all but unknown in the West, is a and#39;hidden yet monumental taleabout an unruly genius who proved that Westerners weren't the only ones turning ballet into a modern art." Washington Post
Review
"A fantastic new book." Daily Beast
Synopsis
The powerfully moving story of the Russian Jewish choreographer who used dance to challenge despotism
Synopsis
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."
About the Author
Janice Ross, a professor in the Theater and Performance Studies Department and Director of the Dance Division of Stanford University, is the former dance critic for the Oakland Tribune. She lives in Atherton, CA.