Léonide Massine

Massine in a portrait by Leon Bakst, 1914.

Leonid Fyodorovich Myasin (Russian: Леонид Фёдорович Мясин), better known as Léonide Massine, the French transliteration, (9 August 1896 – 15 March 1979) was a Russian choreographer and ballet dancer.

Biography

Léonide Massine was born in [[Moscow}} and studied at the Bolshoi Theatre school. From 1915 to 1921 he was the principal choreographer of Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes. Following the departure of Vaslav Nijinsky, the company's first male star, Massine became the preeminent male star and took over Nijinsky's roles.

After the death of Diaghilev, and the disbanding, Massine became the chorographer and male lead dancer of the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, one of the companies that succeeded the original Ballets Russes.

Massine created the world's first symphonic ballet, Les Présages, in 1933 using Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 5. This caused a furore amongst musical purists, who objected to a serious symphonic work's being used as the basis of a ballet. Undeterred, Massine also adapted Hector Berlioz's 1830 Symphonie fantastique and danced the role of the Young Musician with Tamara Toumanova as the Beloved at its premiere at Covent Garden, London, on 24 July 1936 with the Ballets Russes. ^[1] He also created La Boutique fantasque, Gaîté Parisienne and many other popular works during his years with the company.

Massine appeared in the two ballet films by the British directors Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger : The Red Shoes (1948) and The Tales of Hoffmann (1951); and in Powell's later Luna de Miel (1959). He also starred in several ballet short subjects, including a version of Gaîté Parisienne retitled The Gay Parisian, filmed in Technicolor in 1942 for Warner Brothers by the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo.

He died at the age of 82 in Cologne, West Germany.

References

Sources

• Leonide Massine, My Life in Ballet (London: Macmillian, 1968)
• Kathrine Sorley Walker, De Basil's Ballets Russes (London: Hutchinson, 1982)
• Vicente Garcia-Marquez, The Ballets Russes: Colonel de Basil's Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo 1932-1952 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1990)

External links

• Leonide Massine on Australia Dancing
• Léonide Massine at the Internet Movie Database

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