Like a Bomb Going Off

Like A Bomb Going Off explores the rich and complex history of twentieth-century ballet and the even more complex history of the expressive arts in the Soviet Union through the lens of one of its most relentless renegades, Leonid Yakobson. A tightly focused and fascinating study of Leonid Yakobson's work, this biography presents its subject through the multiple ideologies of which he was both a product and a critic, offering a view of him as an artist, a citizen, a Jew, and a man of high-minded principle. Yakobson, a contradictory and fascinating artist, challenged censors, staging resistance from within the most public vocabulary of compliance - classical ballet. Ross's book traces how Yakobson was an artist of contradictions, a modernist who made war on ballet and used unconventional movement while making dances for the leading Soviet companies and Russia's greatest dancers.