IGOR IVANOVYCH YOUSKEVITCH was a founder of and the first soloist of the National Ballet of Cuba, the lead artist of the American Ballet Theater, a performer of one of the leading roles in the Hollywood fi lm “Invitation to the Dance”, which won the Berlin Film Festival in 1956, and the founder of his own stage school.
MAKING THE BALLET MORE POPULAR THAN BASEBALL
At the age of eight, this future world ballet star moved with his parents out of Pyryatin (Poltava region) to the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. It was 1920. Soon the young man became interested in gymnastics and quickly reached remarkable athletic heights.
He was noticed at the tournament by the famous Yugoslav ballerina Zenia Grunt who encouraged him to take up stage dancing. The boy agreed and did not regret it. Not only did he notably perform on the stages of France, but also received an official invitation to the Paris Opera Ballet company and toured with them for a year (1936-1937) in Australia and New Zealand.
Then there were the triumphs of the Le Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo (1938-1944), and the American Ballet Theater, where in 1946 Youskevitch became a leading dancer and one of the finest representatives of the romantic ballet era. People were falling in love with him and worshiping him.
The very popularity of Igor Ivanovych gave the maximum impetus to the development of ballet in the United States. Sometimes, this type of art outshone baseball which is by far the most popular entertainment feature of Americans. There was a ballet boom in the country. In 1955, Igor became an artistic consultant to many theaters, the Metropolitan Opera included.
A MATADOR ON THE STAGE
The duo of Igor Yushkevich and Alicia Alonso, with whom he took an active part in the formation of the Cuban ballet, was called legendary. They toured North and South America, with regular appearances in movies and TV shows. According to experts, maybe only Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev could have been nearly as popular as Youskevitch and Alonso. But that was later.
Even after finishing his stage career in 1962, the artist did not say “adios” to his life’s work. Together with his wife, ballerina Anna Scarpova, he opened his own ballet school in New York, and in a few more years he became a director of the ballet program at the University of Texas at Austin, as well as the artistic director of the New York International Ballet Competition (NYIBC).
Igor Youskevitch, Master of Classical Ballet Style, Dies at 82 - The New York Times.
This article by Nadiia Avramchuk and Mykola Sukhomozsky is reprinted with the publisher's permission from the book (UN)Celebrated Ukrainians Who Changed the Course of History, SAMIT-KNYHA, Kyiv, 2020.