17 Facts About Leon Woizikovsky

Leon Woizikovsky, originally Leon Wojcikowski was a Polish dancer and ballet master, and later choreographer and teacher.

Leon Woizikovsky first came to prominence as a member of the Ballets Russes.

Leon Woizikovsky was in the production of her iconic Les Noces in 1923.

Leon Woizikovsky had to throw me up spinning in the air, then catch me as I came down.

Leon Woizikovsky then signed with the new company Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo.

In 1932 Leon Woizikovsky danced with Irina Baronova in Jeux d'Enfants, with designs by Henri Matisse.

Leon Woizikovsky's dancers included Blinova, Tarakanova, Raievska, Froman, Eglevsky, Youskevitch, and Sokolova.

In 1938 Leon Woizikovsky succeeded Bronislava Nijinska as director of the recently-formed state-sponsored Ballet Polonais in Warsaw.

Leon Woizikovsky led the company to the 1939 World's Fair in New York City.

Leon Woizikovsky managed to escape, rejoining Ballets Russes de Colonel W de Basil in France.

In London Leon Woizikovsky choreographed several ballets, staging his Petrushka in 1958 and his Sheherazade in 1960.

Leon Woizikovsky aided in the reconstruction of Nijinska's choreography for Le Train Bleu.

British ballerina Lydia Sokolova and Leon Woizikovsky were both dancers in Ballets Russes, she from 1913 and he from 1916.

Sokolova remembered that she and Leon Woizikovsky performed a certain pas de deux, a piece which in rehearsal "we enjoyed dancing though we did not think it anything special".

When Leon Woizikovsky was in his early-twenties, she writes, Diaghilev offered him an opportunity to try choreography, but it was too early in his career.

Leon Woizikovsky went up to him and tried to put the dancers' point of view in some detail.

Circa 1916 at Hondarribia on the north coast of Spain near the French border, Sokolova was there when Leon Woizikovsky saved a life, "Tariat, a French boy we had in the company, from drowning in a rough sea".