Leonid Veniaminovich Yakobson (Russian: Леонид Вениаминович Якобсон; January 2 (15), 1904 — October 17, 1975),[1] whose last name is sometimes spelled Jacobson, was a Jewish ballet choreographer from Russia.
The ballet itself was heavily politicized: its plot revolved around Soviet football players going to a bourgeois country where they were baited by police, fascists, and capitalists.
His ballet Shurale was scheduled to be shown in Moscow on June 22, 1941, but on this day Germany invaded the Soviet Union and the premiere was cancelled.
During rehearsals, members of the Communist Party organization made several attempts to oust Yakobson; however, Pyotr Gusev, the then-head of the troupe, refused to fire him.
After being fired, Yakobson was taking jobs in minor provincial theaters where he staged various short ballets.
In 1953, after the death of Stalin, the anti-Semitic campaign gradually decayed, and in 1955 Yakobson was again invited to Leningrad to stage a ballet; this time it was Spartacus by Aram Khachaturian.
He removed the ballet pointe shoes and tutus, and actors were dressed in tunics and sandals like in ancient Rome.
[5] He created in the Kirov theater a number of other ballets including the Bedbug (based on the piece by Vladimir Mayakovsky), Wonderland, Twelve (after the poem by Alexander Blok), but the censors would not let them on stage, since they thought the ballets to be inappropriate for Soviet audience.
After an initial failure in Moscow, where apparently Igor Moiseyev with his Folk Dance Ensemble was chosen ahead of him, Yakobson tried Leningrad.
The last attack occurred in September 1975 in Moscow at the time of admission to the Minister of Culture Pyotr Demichev.
In 2001, Leonid Yakobson's widow Irina Pevzner (ru: Ирина Певзнер) published in the U.S. (not in Russia!)