22 Facts About Mikhail Fokine

Mikhail Fokine played musical instruments, including mandolin, domra, and balalaika.

Mikhail Fokine became frustrated with the life of a dancer and began considering other paths, including painting.

Some of Mikhail Fokine's early works include the ballet Acis and Galatea and The Dying Swan, which was a solo dance for Anna Pavlova choreographed to the music of Le Cygne.

Mikhail Fokine later featured Nijinsky in ballets including Chopiniana, which was renamed Les Sylphides in 1909.

In 1909, Sergei Diaghilev invited Mikhail Fokine to become the resident choreographer of the first season of the Ballets Russes in Paris.

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Mikhail Fokine moved to Sweden with his family in 1918, and later established his home in New York City, where he founded a ballet school in 1921, and has appeared with his wife, Vera Fokina.

In 1937, Mikhail Fokine joined Wassily de Basil's offshoot of the Ballets Russes, which was eventually named the Original Ballet Russe.

Mikhail Fokine's choreography was featured with the company until 1941.

Mikhail Fokine staged more than eighty ballets in Europe and the United States.

Mikhail Fokine aspired to move beyond traditional ballet, toward a method of utilizing ballet to communicate the natural beauty of Man.

Mikhail Fokine did not believe virtuoso ballet techniques to symbolize anything, and thought they could be substituted with forms that better expressed emotions and themes.

Mikhail Fokine was a strong believer in the communicative power of dance and pushed for creativity that broke tradition, believing that tradition is often distinct from reality and fails to capture the entire spectrum of human emotions.

Mikhail Fokine believed that unless movements are expressive, they are irrational and neither delightful nor tolerable.

Mikhail Fokine sought to strip ballets of their artificial technicality and outdated costumes.

Mikhail Fokine believed that many of the ballets of his time used costumes and techniques that did not reflect the themes of the ballets.

Mikhail Fokine studied Greek and Egyptian art, including vase painting and sculpture, and incorporated these into his ballets.

Mikhail Fokine believed that pointe should be used when the dancing body desires to express a soaring and upward theme, rather than to flaunt the strength of dancers' feet.

Mikhail Fokine presented this new idea to the Imperial Mariinsky Theater's management, but did not win their support.

One of Mikhail Fokine's requests was to have his dancers perform barefoot in his 1907 ballet Eunice.

Mikhail Fokine's request was denied, and Fokine had toes painted on the dancers' tights so they would appear to be barefoot.

Mikhail Fokine experimented with shifting the emphasis of movement away from the lower body and towards the whole body, with freer use of the arms and torso and using each muscle with clear intention.

In doing so, Mikhail Fokine sought to unify motion with emotion and the body with the soul, bringing new life to the ballet as a language and an art.