Like a Bomb Going Off: Leonid Yakobson and Ballet as Resistance in Soviet Russia

by Janice Ross, Lynn Garafola (Foreword by)

Overview

Everyone has heard of George Balanchine. Few outside Russia know of Leonid Yakobson, Balanchine’s contemporary, 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 dances that spoke to the Soviet condition. His work was often considered so culturally explosive that it was described as “like a bomb going off.”

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 biography brings to life a hidden history of artistic resistance in the USSR through this brave artist, who struggled against officially sanctioned anti-Semitism while offering a vista of hope.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780300210644
Publisher:	Yale University Press
Publication date:	01/28/2015
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	536
File size:	9 MB

About the Author

ENG

Janice Ross, Professor Emerita, Theatre and Performance Studies Dept. Stanford University, taught Dance Studies for 34 years. She has degrees from UC Berkeley (BA honors) and Stanford (MA & PhD). She is the author of five books and numerous articles. Her awards include Guggenheim and Fulbright Fellowships; Stanford Humanities Center Fellowships; Bogliasco Foundation Fellowship, Italy; NYU Center for Ballet and the Arts Fellowship; and research grants from the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture. She received the Dean’s Award for Distinguished Teaching at Stanford and is an Honorary Fellow of the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance, Israel.

RUS

Дженис Росс — почетный профессор кафедры театроведения Стэнфордского университета. Автор пяти книг и большого количества статей. Среди ее наград – стипендии Гуггенхайма и Фулбрайта, стипендии Стэнфордского гуманитарного центра, стипендия фонда Больяско (Италия), стипендия Центра балета и искусств Нью-Йоркского университета, а также исследовательские гранты Мемориального фонда еврейской культуры. Почетный член Иерусалимской академии музыки и танца

Editorial Reviews

"How wonderful that there is a new book about Leonid Yakobson, this unique and genius choreographer. I am happy to have been his muse, and I deeply appreciate his profoundly meaningful influence on the way I danced, which continued to shape my development throughout my career."—NATALIA MAKAROVA

Natalia Makarova

"Leonid Yakobson was one of the most influential choreographers of his time, yet until now he has gone largely unrecognized. Thanks to Janice Ross, this extraordinary artist, who deserves the praise of the dance world and beyond, is brought to life in this revelatory, important book."—MIKKO NISSINEN, artistic director, Boston Ballet

Mikko Nissinen

[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.”—Roslyn Sulcas, New York Times

New York Times - Roslyn Sulcas

"On the face of it, ballet is the least political of the arts. Yet in the Soviet Union even dancing came under state scrutiny. Like a Bomb Going Off tells the story of a remarkably courageous dancer, Leonid Yakobson, who first as a performer and then as choreographer came to irritate the Soviet authorities, to suffer punishments, and yet never gave up the fight for his art."—RICHARD PIPES, Harvard University, emeritus, author of A Consise History of the Russian Revolution

Richard Pipes

Illuminating . . . Ross is right: The story of this artist, all but unknown in the West, is a 'hidden yet monumental tale' about an unruly genius who proved that Westerners weren’t the only ones turning ballet into a modern art.”—Sarah Kaufman, Washington Post

Washington Post - Sarah Kaufman

"In 1975 the Moscow critic Vadim Gayevsky wrote, 'Time passes, but Yakobson’s place in our ballet does not change. Eternal avant-gardist. Eternal free thinker. The sharpest poet with the best sense of humor and the poet of sharp humor. Spiritual colleague of Rodin, Chagall and Shostakovich. Who else can boast of titles like that?' That quote is included in this book, and God knows I cannot compete with the eloquence of Mr. Gayevsky. I salute Janice Ross for allowingus to peek behind the curtain of Yakobson’s extraordinarily creative life. His personal struggle for freedom - in life and in his art - was exemplary knowing the time and the place in which he fought to make his dreams and ideas into theatrical reality."——MIKHAIL BARYSHNIKOV
 

Mikhail Baryshnikov

Without Balanchine, the thinking goes, ballet would have buried itself in the past—and indeed, since the master’s death, in 1983, it has struggled to chart a future… Janice Ross soundly rejects this self-congratulatory and ultimately self-defeating account . . . She delivers on her claim that ‘during the initial years of the Cold War, the West did not have an exclusive purchase on experimentation in dance.’ The book’s timing could not be better . . . Yakobson is the ideal figure on whom to focus a corrected and expanded ballet history.”—Apollinaire Scherr, Atlantic

Atlantic - Apollinaire Scherr

Revolutionary Russian-Jewish choreographer Leonid Yakobson comes alive in Janice Ross’s Like a Bomb Going Off.”—Vanity Fair

Vanity Fair

A fantastic new book.”—Daily Beast

Daily Beast

"Ambitious and fascinating . . . This admirably researched and well-written book throws a sharply focused light on a truly extraordinary artist and courageous human being."—Rita Feliciano, Dancers' Group

Dancers' Group - Rita Feliciano

"Peerless: a heartbreaking account of the distance between a choreographer's intentions and their staged realizations, a page-turning story of one Promethean life, and the most revealing of cultural studies about ballet's perversion by politics."—MINDY ALOFF, author of Hippo in a Tutu: Dancing in Disney Animation

Mindy Aloff

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."—Steve Donoghue, Open Letters Monthly

Open Letters Monthly - Steve Donoghue

'Ross is a passionate advocate, ardently evoking his surviving ballets and why his work, and his courage, meant so much to Soviet audiences.'-Zoe Anderson, The Independent

The Independent - Zoe Anderson