George Zoritch

A promising student, he won a scholarship to study with one of the most prominent teachers in the city, Olga Preobrajenskaya, a former star of the Russian Imperial Ballet.

After only nine months' study with Preobrajenskaya, young Yuri, was given his first professional job in 1932 by the dancer and actress Ida Rubenstein, who had a short season booked at the Paris Opera featuring ballets created by Michel Fokine.

Following this engagement, Zoritch rapidly became a sought-after performer in a number of companies linked with former stars of Sergei Diaghilev's famous Ballets Russes.

In the de Basil company, the 18-year-old Zoritch became a favorite of the choreographer Léonide Massine, who cast him in no fewer than eleven ballets, notably Symphonie Fantastique (1936), set to the hallucinatory music of Hector Berlioz.

With Massine as artistic director, they created a company expressly to tour the United States and to present occasional seasons in Monte Carlo and London.

During the company's American tours over the next few years, Zoritch's startling good looks and winning personality on stage attracted increased attention to his dancing.

[7] Between these two, Zoritch appeared in a more substantial ballet, as the Fiancé in Frederick Ashton's Devil's Holiday, a major work in a prologue and three scenes set to music by Vincenzo Tommasini on themes of Niccolo Paganini.

Costumed as the Spectre in a sheer, rose-colored body stocking with a single strand of small roses trailing across his bare chest and over one shoulder, his beautifully proportioned figure was perfectly revealed.

There is a famous photograph by Maurice Seymour of Zoritch in this role, standing in repose with arms curved softly aloft, that has been much admired and frequently reproduced.

He soon demonstrated that he was, in the words of Walter Terry, "the perfect cavalier" for the company's current ballerinas and distinguished guests such as Alicia Alonso and Yvette Chauviré.

In the course of his long career, Zoritch's most famous role, however, was in a revolutionary work created in the early twentieth century: Vaslav Nijinsky's L'Après-midi d'un Faune, set to Claude Debussy's symphonic poem in 1912.

George Zoritch was ideally suited to reinterpret Nijinsky's vision of a lusty young woodland creature lounging in the heat of a summer afternoon.

"[20] Zoritch's personality, charm, and wisdom survive delightfully in the 2005 documentary film Ballets Russes, a priceless reunion of the survivors from the post-Diaghilev days.