Leonide Massine

Léonide Massine, born in Moscow as Leonide Feodorovitch Miassin, entered the Imperial Theatre School at eight and trained in both drama and ballet. Serge Diaghilev invited him into the Ballets Russes, where Enrico Cecchetti continued his training and Massine developed a collaborative artistic vision that joined music, dance, painting, poetry and drama into unified theatrical works.

Massine created *Soleil de Nuit* in 1915 and by 1920 had established himself as a major choreographic voice through works including *Parade*, *La Boutique fantasque*, *Le Tricorne*, *Pulcinella* and *Le Chant du Rossignol*. His theatrical range combined ballet, folk and demi-caractère styles with marked characterization, expanding the Ballets Russes beyond its existing vocabulary.

During the 1930s, Massine developed the symphonic ballets *Les Présages* and *Choreartium*, which organized choreography to answer the scale and development of orchestral music. He created *Gaîté Parisienne* for the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo and worked for Ballet Theatre in the United States, becoming a U.S. citizen in 1944.

Massine extended his practice into film, choreographing and performing in *The Red Shoes* (1948) and *The Tales of Hoffmann* (1951), and contributed choreography to *Honeymoon* (1958). Throughout his later years, he continued staging ballets, teaching and writing about choreographic composition as an explicit subject of study.