Massine: A Biography

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For twenty-five years after his Paris debut in 1914, Leonide Massine (1895-1979) was indisputably the premier male dancer and chief choreographer of Europe. Now, just as revivals of his ballets are reconfirming his status, historian Vicente Garcia-Marquez gives us a well-rounded, definitive biography that places Massine firmly in the mainstream of twentieth-century cultural history. Onstage, he was widely praised for indelible performances in roles he created for himself (Joseph in The Legend of Joseph, the ...
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Overview

For twenty-five years after his Paris debut in 1914, Leonide Massine (1895-1979) was indisputably the premier male dancer and chief choreographer of Europe. Now, just as revivals of his ballets are reconfirming his status, historian Vicente Garcia-Marquez gives us a well-rounded, definitive biography that places Massine firmly in the mainstream of twentieth-century cultural history. Onstage, he was widely praised for indelible performances in roles he created for himself (Joseph in The Legend of Joseph, the Miller in Le Tricorne, and the Chinese Conjuror in Parade are only a few) and as the choreographer of other perennial repertory favorites (such as Le Beau Danube, Gaite parisienne, Scuola di ballo). In the 1930s his choreography took an innovative and controversial turn with the creation of Les Presages, Choreartium (both recently revived in France and America), and Symphonie fantastique - ballets whose grandiose combination of symphonic music, metaphysical scenarios, and spectacularly complex movement patterns and configurations polarized the critics and the public. Massine's collaborations with the major creative spirits of our time - including Diaghilev, Stravinsky, Falla, Cocteau, Picasso, Matisse, Miro, and Dali - were integral to his life and art, and each of these giants has a role in this book. So too does Michael Powell, the British filmmaker who, fortunately for us, recorded some of Massine's most brilliant characterizations, in The Red Shoes and The Tales of Hoffmann.
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Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly
An engaging and essential portrait of a titan of 20th-century dance, this colorful biography of Russian-born Lonide Massine (1895-1979) profiles an astonishingly inventive choreographer who was also a consummate ``dancer-actor'' capable of creating rounded, convincing characters. Massine's early choreography, reflecting his collaborations with Picasso, Matisse and Andr Masson, and with composers Igor Stravinsky, Manuel de Falla and Erik Satie, embodied a cubist-influenced assault on the body image. In the late 1930s, he produced abstract symphonic ballets suggesting cosmic conflict, violence, loss of love, destruction-a corollary to the global anxiety engendered by the rise of fascism. Later, he did story ballets like the film The Red Shoes (1948) and embraced eclecticism, but the public moved away from his stylized idiom. The late Garca-Mrquez (The Ballets Russes) interviewed Massine extensively in 1978, yet the very private, demanding, possessive, often tyrannical genius remains elusive, although we get a fairly candid account of his stormy affair with impresario Sergey Diaghilev, his four marriages and his increasing obsession with art as a substitute for human relationships. Photos. (Oct.)
Library Journal
International superstar ballet dancer and choreographer Lonide Massine (1895-1979) created a body of work that has had a significant impact on this century's choreographic developments. Massine's symphonic or abstract ballets have been most influential, but certainly his skill in characterization, his elevation of the male dancer to an equal status with that of the ballerina, and his constant experimentations with regard to movements, music, and design set new standards for ballet. Massine was strongly focused on work, and his creativity was fueled by numerous personal and professional liaisons, the most notable with impresario Diaghilev. The late Garca-Mrquez (The Ballet Russes, 1990) was meticulous in his research, but, by his own admission, he fails "to capture the persona, the man's inner life," perhaps because Massine was so introspective. By the book's end, the essence of the artist eludes and baffles both the author and the reader. Still, in comparison with and as a complement to My Life (1960), Massine's guarded autobiography, this book will serve as the definitive record of Massine's career for some time. Recommended for all dance collections.-Joan Stahl, National Museum of American Art, Washington, D.C.
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Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9780394510033
  • Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
  • Publication date: 2/29/2000
  • Edition description: 1st ed
  • Edition number: 1
  • Pages: 456
  • Product dimensions: 6.61 (w) x 9.55 (h) x 1.25 (d)

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