From Russia with Dance by Amherst Professor Rabinowitz
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. - Stanley J. Rabinowitz, the Henry Steele Commager Professor of Russian at Amherst College will discuss the book "Ballet's Magic Kingdom: Selected Writings on Dance in Russia, 1911-1925," which he edited and translated. The lecture will be given at Williams College on Thursday, February 12, at 7:30 p.m. in Griffin Hall, room 2. The talk is open to the public and free.The New York Times Sunday Book Review began their review of this book of dance writings of Akim Volynsky, writing, "This is a fantastic book."
Volynsky was a famed Russian literary critic, journalist, and art historian who became St. Petersburg's most prolific ballet critic in the early 20th century. His writings were controversial, provocative, and profoundly influential and reinforced the artistic and intellectual value of classical dance.
The book includes Rabinowitz's translation of 40 of Volynsky's articles, including Volynsky's magnum opus, "The Book of Exaltations," an introspective analysis of classical dance technique that serves both as an introduction and probing exposition of the topic.
In his critical introduction, Rabinowitz sets Volynsky's life and work against the backdrop of the principal intellectual currents of his time, exploring how Volynsky's work emphasizes the spiritual and ethereal qualities of ballet.
The articles include accounts of dance luminaries Anna Pavlova, Mikhail Fokine, Tamara Karsavina and George Balanchine, whose keen musical sense and creative interpretive power Volynsky was one of the first to recognize.
"Not since the precise and furious writings of Lincoln Kirstein have we read (in English) such informed, cultured and unapologetically opinionated prose on ballet," writes The New York Times. "This book is indeed, as Rabinowitz writes in his excellent introduction, Volynsky's 'hymn to the sublime art of dance'."
Tim Scholl, professor of Russian and Comparative Literature at Oberlin College writes, "Only a scholar of Stanley Rabinowitz's erudition and experience could navigate the treacherous waters of Russian cultural politics in the early 20th century, the tempestuous world of Russian and Soviet dance and the thorny contradictions of Volynsky's thought and syntax to bring these invaluable documents into English."
Rabinowitz directs the Amherst Center for Russian Culture, home to one of the country's most prolific collections of 20th century Russian rare books, periodicals, and archives. He teaches popular courses including a survey of Russian literature from Dostoevsky to Nabokov and a course on studies in Russian language and culture.
The talk will be followed by a book signing.
