Valse Triste

Résumé du livre

In 1922 the great Russian poet Anna Akhmatova declared the teenage ballet dancer Lydia Ivanova "the biggest wonder of the Petrograd ballet." At the same time, the renowned Soviet composer Dimitri Shostokovich and the lionized poet-revolutionary Vladimir Mayakovsky were taking notice of the young choreographer Georgi Balanchivadze. Later that season, the two wunderkinds of the former Imperial Ballet staged a tragic solo, inspired by another pioneer of modernism, Isadora Duncan. Valse Triste seems, in retrospect and reconstruction, a prophecy--of Ivanova's tragic fate, an eerie foreshadow of Duncan's own, and of Balanchivadze's coming fame as George Balanchine. -- Page 4 of cover.