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Alla Osipenko bio by Joel Lobenthal


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I just received and began to read Joel Lobenthal's marvelous biography ALLA OSIPENKO: BEAUTY AND RESISTANCE IN SOVIET BALLET (Oxford Univ Press, 2016). WOW!!! After only the first seven chapters, I could not wait to spread the word that this tome offers one of the best-researched, most fascinating AND clearly-written insights on mid-20th-C Kirov Ballet and artistic life in the USSR. Osipenko, with her lean line and beauty, was an artist ahead of her time. This is one of those "impossible-to-put-down" books that, I'm sure, will delight most Mariinsky Ballet lovers!

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0190253703/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?qid=1452943943&sr=8-1π=AC_SX118_SY170_QL70&keywords=alla+osipenko+beauty+and+resistance+in+soviet+ballet

Update, 1/16/2016: Now having completed it, I can only reinforce my earlier feelings that this is one of the finest books (English or Russian languages) written on late-Soviet ballet history. It reads like an autobiography, which makes sense, as Lobenthal's main resource was a series of 20 face-to-face interviews with Osipenko herself. Learn about her studying under Vaganova...her early triumphs in Paris...the creation of Grigorovich's Stone Flower...working with the difficult Jacobson...her four marriages...who-was-who in the 1950s & 60s Kirov, etc. A treasure of a book!

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