Ismene Brown

Leonid Yakobson: the greatest ballet genius you’ve never heard of

A review of Janice Ross’s Like a Bomb Going Off brings the neglected choreographer Leonid Yakobson firmly back centre stage

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issue 28 March 2015
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  • Like a Bomb Going Off: Leonid Yakobson and Ballet as Resistance in Soviet Russia

    Janice Ross

    Yale, pp. 522

On YouTube there’s a brief dance video of a Viennese waltz so enchanting that not even Fred and Ginger in ‘Cheek to Cheek’ can outcharm it. A dandy in top hat and a captivatingly pretty girl in bonnet and white frills do ecstatic jumps and twirls in each other’s arms to the seething Rosenkavalier waltz.

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