Carlo Blasis in Russia (1861-1864)

Italian-born and French-trained, Carlo Blasis left his mark on mid-nineteenth-century ballet as a choreographer, theorist, and pedagogue extraordinaire who trained the first great generation of Italian ballerinas. In 1861 he went to Russia, where he spent the next several years teaching at Moscow’s Bolshoi Theater, reviving "old" ballets from the company’s repertory, and staging new ballets. Written by Russia’s premiere dance historian, Elizabeth Souritz, this book offers a full account of the choreographer’s works for the Bolshoi, especially Faust, a theme to which he returned for decades. The volume also includes a discussion of Blasis’ last book, a fascinating but little-known volume published in Russia, which is probably the best single source of information about the era’s Bolshoi dancers. Souritz pieces together her story from a host of archival sources and an encyclopedic knowledge of Bolshoi history.