André Levinson

André Yacovlev Levinson, Андрей (Андрэ) Яковлевич Левинсон [Andrey Yakovl'evich Levinson], November 1, 1887, St. Petersburg - December 3, 1933, Paris) was, after leaving Russia in 1918, a French dance journalist. He was awarded the Ordre national de la Légion d'honneur.

At the University of Sankt Peterburg he had been a professor of Romance languages. With regard to ballet, he then championed "pure academic dance". Accordingly, he opposed many innovations advanced by choreographer Michel Fokine and impresario Sergei Diaghilev of Ballets Russes. In 1918 Levinson left Russia for Lithuania, then Germany, arriving in Paris in 1921. He taught a course in Russian literature at the Sorbonne. Then Ballets Russes regularly performed in Paris, where it continued to draw great interest.[1]

Due to the arrival of Levinson and another Russian dance critic, the "French were treated to informed observation of the dance scene in print."[2] Many books, among them volumes on Leon Bakst (1921), Ana Pavlova (1928), and Serge Lifar (1934, posthumous), were authored by Levinson.[3] Of course, he did not confine himself to Russian ballet.

"The Russian critic André Levinson, although an unyielding defender of classicism in ballet, was nonetheless awed by Isadora's art as 'the cult of the transfigured flesh, the religion of the body, the habitat of the gods'."[4]

A selection of his dance writings from Paris was published in 1991.[5]

References

Horst Koegler, Concise Oxford Dictionary of Ballet ([1972], Oxford University 1977), p.324 ("academic dance" quote).
Nancy Reynolds and Malcolm McCormick, No Fixed Points. Dance in the twentieth century (Yale University 2003), pp. 214-216, "French were treated" quote at 214. The other Russian critic was Valerian Svetlov, husband of dancer Vera Trefilova.
Koegler, Concise Oxford Dictionary of Ballet ([1972], 1977), p.324 (books about people of Ballets Russes). Lifar, after Diaghilev died, had been named by Jacques Rouché ballet master and principle dancer of the Paris Opéra, 1930-1959. Koegler (1977), p.404.
Levinson, 'In Memoriam' from his 1929 book La danse d'aujourd'hui, quoted by Reynolds and McCormick, No Fixed Points (2003), p.11.
Levinson, André Levinson on Dance: Writings from Paris in the twenties (Wesleyan University 1991), edited and introduced by Joan Acocella and Lynn Garafola.

Literary works

Meister des Ballets, 1923
La Argentina, 1928
La danse d'aujourd'hui, 1929

External links

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[1] Horst Koegler, Concise Oxford Dictionary of Ballet ([1972], Oxford University 1977), p.324 ("academic dance" quote).

[2] Nancy Reynolds and Malcolm McCormick, No Fixed Points. Dance in the twentieth century (Yale University 2003), pp. 214-216, "French were treated" quote at 214. The other Russian critic was Valerian Svetlov, husband of dancer Vera Trefilova.

[3] Koegler, Concise Oxford Dictionary of Ballet ([1972], 1977), p.324 (books about people of Ballets Russes). Lifar, after Diaghilev died, had been named by Jacques Rouché ballet master and principle dancer of the Paris Opéra, 1930-1959. Koegler (1977), p.404.

[4] Levinson, 'In Memoriam' from his 1929 book La danse d'aujourd'hui, quoted by Reynolds and McCormick, No Fixed Points (2003), p.11.

[5] Levinson, André Levinson on Dance: Writings from Paris in the twenties (Wesleyan University 1991), edited and introduced by Joan Acocella and Lynn Garafola.