Ida Rubinstein (1883–1960) captivated Paris's dancers, composers, artists, and audiences from her time in the Ballets Russes in 1909 to her final performances in 1939. Trained in Russia as an actress and a dancer, her life spanned the artistic freedom of the Belle Époque through the ravages of World War I, the Depression, and finally World War II. This critical biography carefully examines aspects of Rubinstein's life and career that have previously received little attention. These include her early life in Russia, her writing about performance aesthetics, her curated approach to acting and dancing roles, and her encumbered position as a woman and a Jew. Rubinstein used her considerable fortune to produce dozens of plays, lyric creations, and ballets, making her one of the foremost producers of the first half of the twentieth century. Employing the greatest scenic artists, Léon Bakst and Alexander Benois; the distinguished composers Igor Stravinsky, Arthur Honegger, and Claude Debussy; celebrated writers including Paul Valéry and André Gide; and the brilliant choreographer Bronislava Nijinska, Rubinstein transformed twentieth-century theater and dance.

Paris at the turn of the century - Art Nouveau, Renoir, Toulouse-Lautrec and the Folies Bergere. This was the atmosphere which nurtured the artistic development of the remarkable dancer and choreographer Ida Rubinstein.This long-awaited biography gives us a unique insight into the life of a remarkable woman, responsible for a fascinating chapter of our artistic heritage. She was a chameleon, a diva, who lived many lives, overcoming the anti-Semitism of her times to enchant and captivate the highest of societies. Untrained as a dancer, Ida Rubinstein's charisma attracted collaborators such as Debussy, Stravinsky, Ravel, Cocteau, Bakst, and Benois.

This is a study of the career and achievement of a multi-talented personality. Ida Rubinstein was born in 1885 in tsarist Russia and from an early age she used her immense family fortune to commission original stage works in which she herself invariably appeared. She started out with the intention of making a name for herself as an actress, but her gifts as a mime and dancer attracted Diaghilev and he introduced her to western audiences when his Ballets Russes came to Paris in 1909. Ida Rubinstein was too much of an egoist to remain in his shadow and she subsequently went on to pursue an independent career as an impresario, in many ways Diaghilev’s equal, as a dancer of as high a caliber as Karsavina (but of greater versatility) and as a dramatic actress who came a very close second to Sarah Bernhardt. In the process she worked with some of the greatest creative geniuses of the twentieth century, designers, choreographers, writers and composers. When she finally withdrew into voluntary seclusion after the Second World War, she left behind a remarkable legacy of works as a contribution to that high point of western civilization, the Third French Republic. Her name will continue to be associated with such masterpieces as Debussy’s Le Martyre de Saint Sebastien, Ravel’s La Valse and Bolero, Stravinsky’s Persephone and Honegger’s Jeanne d’Arc au bucher. She will also be long remembered as the epitome of extravagance, high style and good taste, unrivalled even in an era renowned for its panache and hedonism. Most of the illustrations in this book have never been published before.

Embodied Texts: Symbolist Playwright-Dancer Collaborations explores the dynamic relationship between Symbolist theatre and early modern dance across Europe from the 1890s through the 1930s. Gabriele D'Annunzio's projects with Ida Rubinstein; Hugo von Hofmannsthal's pantomimes for Grete Wiesenthal; W. B. Yeats's work with Michio Ito and Ninette de Valois; and Paul Claudel's collaborations with Jean Börlin and the Ballets Suédois are studied in depth to shed new light on an evolving dance-theatre form within Symbolist culture. Buoyed by the era's heightened interest in the expressive qualities of the body, these playwrights were highly invested in the authority of language, yet were drawn to the capacity of dance to evoke spiritual or psychological states which words could not completely capture. In its belief of fundamental correspondences among the arts, Symbolism encouraged experimentation across disciplines, and this study traces interconnections among many of its significant figures including Max Reinhardt, Claude Debussy, Gertrud Eysoldt, Edward Gordon Craig, Bronislava Nijinksa, Isadora Duncan, Jaques Dalcroze, Darius Milhaud, Vsevolod Meyerhold, Mariano Fortuny, Terence Gray, George Antheil, Eleonora Duse, and Michel Fokine.

Coinciding with a traveling exhibition opening at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in June, this volume presents a comprehensive and definitive analysis of the life and art of Romaine Brooks, reproducing for the first time in color 34 of the 40 nudes and portraits she painted. Includes an essay by Joe Lucchesi.

La Nijinska is the first biography of twentieth-century ballet's premier female choreographer, shedding new light on the modern history of ballet, and recuperating the memory of lost works and forgotten artists, all while revealing the sexism that still confronts women choreographers in the ballet world.

Elsie Levy was born in the Jewish East End of London, came to Sydney with her family when she was 14, and joined the Communist Party of Australia when she was a young woman. In this book, her son explores her disaporic Jewish identity, both English and Australian, and in the process journeys into Jewish cultural histories. We meet important cultural figures such as Leonard Woolf, Freud, Schnitzler, Veza Canetti and Ida Rubinstein. This journey leads also to English anti-Semitism, including, shockingly, Bloomsbury. In turning to Communism and marrying out, Elsie Levy became one of history's undutiful daughters.