Writing this biography was an extraordinary experience for me. I have been writing about the arts for more than forty years. Over the decades I was Associate Editor of Ballet Review and dance critic for The New York Sun. Talking to Alla Osipenko provided singular insight into the culture and politics of the Soviet Union, as well as the individual artistry and psychology of this great ballerina. I left every interview with her feeling elated. By the time my biography was published in 2015, I also knew/met/had interviewed many of the people she described and could write from some degree of first-hand knowledge.
I wrote
Alla Osipenko: Beauty and Resistance in Soviet Ballet
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Now 92, Russian ballerina Alla Osipenko was one of the greatest of the great. In the late 1990s, it was my pleasure to make around 40 trips from New York City to Hartford, Connecticut, to interview Osipenko, who was then teaching and coaching at the Hartford Ballet and its school.
This was her belated American debut and a somewhat bittersweet one. Years earlier, her confrontations with Soviet authorities meant that her travel became restricted and, much to her chagrin, she’d never been allowed to dance in America. Our conversations form the basis of my biography, as she recalls in frank detail her art, her life, and her cultural and political context.
