Nina Youshkevitch

She was born in Odesa, Soviet Ukraine, on 7 December 1920, the daughter of the playwright and novelist Semyon Yushkevich and his second wife, Anastasia Solomonovna Youshkevitch, née Selinger.

Youshkevitch trained with former ballerinas of the Mariinsky Theatre Olga Preobrajenska, and Lubov Egorova, and with French choreographer and ballet master Leo Staats.

British dance critic Arnold Haskell, who accompanied the tour, wrote of her: "As a dancer the most astonishing was Nina Youchkevitch...she has an unusual sense of music and the grand manner that made her performances in Aurora's Wedding and The Swan Lake absolutely unforgettable...Among the younger dancers of this company she is the one obvious hundred percent classical ballerina.

In this company, which won Grand Prix for performance and for choreography at the Exposition Internationale in Paris that year, Youshkevitch created principal roles in the ballets Concerto de Chopin, Apollon et la Belle, and Le Rappel.

Though Nijinska's telegram did not reach her until the concert had already taken place, it enabled Youshkevitch to receive a visa to travel to America; and she performed again in Chopin Concerto at the Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival in 1942.

[20] She opened her own dance school, also called the Nina Youshkevitch Ballet Workshop, in New York City in 1978; and continued to teach there until shortly before her death.

In 1990, Youshkevitch assisted Irina Nijinska, in reviving the Bride's Variation from Le Baiser de la Fée, at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.