To Dance: The Autobiography of Valery Panov

by Valery Panov, George Feifer

The autobigraphy of Valery Panov, the world famos ballet dancer from the Soviet Union, who astounded the Russians as well as the rest of the world. Shares life inside the Soviet Union as a dancer.

400 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1978

About the author

Valery Matveevich Panov was a Soviet dancer and choreographer. Born and raised in the Soviet Union, he trained in Leningrad and performed with the Kirov from 1964 to 1972. He and his second wife Galina, who was a ballerina at the Kirov, came to international attention in 1972 when they applied for exit visas to emigrate to Israel, which they were given in 1974. Panov worked with the Berlin Opera Ballet, as well as companies in other western European and North American countries, during the late 1970s and 1980s. He formed the Ashdod Art Centre in Israel, in 1993, and five years later founded the Panov Ballet Theatre, also in Ashdod.

Reviews

[Debbie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This autobiography could have been shortened. It is a story of one man's struggle to escape the binds of Soviet domination over an artist's desire to express himself creatively. However please read it with perspective as Panov later said he wanted to live in Berlin over NYC because the German government funds the arts, exactly what Russia did for him until he emigrated. Also a two year wait for a visa was normal so his self-described plight was typical of a Russian citizen who wanted to emigrate. As he wrote, "I had no right to expect the West that had saved us to be perfect...Nothing could ever reduce us to what we had been there."

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Autobiography of Soviet-born Kirov Principal dancer Valery Panov who came to international notice in the early 1970s when he applied for exit visas for himself and his second wife Galina to emigrate to Israel. Reading between the lines one feels sure that given half the chance he would have defected but it emerges later that his first wife had warned the authorities that if he was allowed to travel with the company he would definitely defect which makes sense of the Kirov’s repeated excuses about not allowing him to tour. Following his application for exit visas the couple are kicked out of the Kirov for their betrayal of the homeland and shunned by the company and their friends, Panov himself is briefly imprisoned, and both are denied access to class for two years while a political battle over their future is played out on an international stage. John Cranko and one of America’s top dance critics, Clive Barnes championed the Panovs and there were political protests staged by a staggering roll call of leading theatre names of the time who fought for their release. Eventually after a two-year long wrangle involving hunger strikes and a shocking level of harassment and persecution the couple’s papers were signed and they departed Russia for Israel. I have to say, the subject is ultimately an unlikeable character, revealing his own personality flaws through his opinions of everyone else around him and his attitudes and behaviour towards those closest to him. He comes across as rather full of himself and I suspect by his failure to make himself a household name in the West as other Russian defectors did he wasn't quite such a sensational dancer as he makes out. But the account of his and his then wife’s persecution by the Soviet authorities is compulsive reading and provides a gruesomely interesting context to consider the experiences of other, more celebrated defectors, namely Nureyev (defected 1961), Markarova (1970) and Baryshnikov (1974).

[James · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best books on dance and what it means/takes/is to be a dancer. Plus, enlightening aspects of life in Communist Russia.

[Katie · Rating 3 out of 5]

So, the main reason I own this book is that it talks a lot about the woman that I named my daughter after, Galina Panov. What an amazing journey they traveled together!