André Yacovlev Levinson, Андрей (Андрэ) Яковлевич Левинсон 'Andrey Yakovl'evich Levinson'' November 1, 1887,

St. Petersburg Saint Petersburg, formerly known as Petrograd and later Leningrad, is the second-largest city in Russia after Moscow. It is situated on the River Neva, at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea. The city had a population of 5,601, ...

- December 3, 1933,

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...

) was, after leaving Russia in 1918, a French

dance Dance is an The arts, art form, consisting of sequences of body movements with aesthetic and often Symbol, symbolic value, either improvised or purposefully selected. Dance can be categorized and described by its choreography, by its repertoir ...

journalist A journalist is a person who gathers information in the form of text, audio or pictures, processes it into a newsworthy form and disseminates it to the public. This is called journalism. Roles Journalists can work in broadcast, print, advertis ...

. 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 Michael Fokine ( – 22 August 1942) was a Russian choreographer and dancer. Career Early years Fokine was born in Saint Petersburg to a prosperous merchant and at the age of 9 was accepted into the Saint Petersburg Imperial Ballet Sch ...

and impresario

Sergei Diaghilev Sergei Pavlovich Diaghilev ( ; rus, Серге́й Па́влович Дя́гилев, , sʲɪrˈɡʲej ˈpavləvʲɪdʑ ˈdʲæɡʲɪlʲɪf; 19 August 1929), also known as Serge Diaghilev, was a Russian art critic, patron, ballet impresario an ...

Ballets Russes The Ballets Russes () was an itinerant ballet company begun in Paris that performed between 1909 and 1929 throughout Europe and on tours to North and South America. The company never performed in Russia, where the Russian Revolution, Revolution ...

. 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. Due to the arrival of Levinson and another Russian dance critic, the "French were treated to informed observation of the dance scene in print." Many books, among them volumes on

Léon Bakst Léon (Lev) Samoylovich Bakst (), born Leyb-Khaim Izrailevich Rosenberg (; – 27 December 1924),

(1921), Ana Pavlova (1928), and

Serge Lifar Serge Lifar (, ''Serhіy Mуkhailovуch Lуfar'') ( 15 December 1986) was a Ukrainian dancer, choreographer, and one of the greatest male ballet dancers of the 20th century. Lifar was also a choreographer, director, writer, theoretician abou ...

(1934, posthumous), were authored by Levinson. 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 Isidora or Isadora is a female given name of Greek origin, derived from Ἰσίδωρος, ''Isídōros'' (a compound of Ἶσις, ''Ísis'', and δῶρον, ''dōron'': "gift of he goddessIsis"). The male equivalent is Isidore. The name surviv ...
's art as 'the cult of the transfigured flesh, the religion of the body, the habitat of the gods'."

A selection of his dance writings from Paris was published in 1991.Levinson, ''André Levinson on Dance: Writings from Paris in the twenties'' (Wesleyan University 1991), edited and introduced by

Joan Acocella Joan Barbara Acocella (née Ross, April 13, 1945 – January 7, 2024) was an American dance critic and author. From 1998 to 2019, she was dance critic for ''The New Yorker''. She also wrote for ''The New York Review of Books'' for 33 years and a ...

and

Lynn Garafola Lynn Theresa Garafola (born December 12, 1946) is an American dance historian, linguist, critic, curator, lecturer, and educator. A prominent researcher and writer with broad interests in the field of dance history, she is acknowledged as the lea ...

References

Literary works

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

External links

Biography in Italian

1887 births 1933 deaths White Russian emigrants to France French male writers 20th-century French journalists 20th-century French male writers {{France-dance-bio-stub