'The Dancing Philosopher'

Abstract

The article examines the activities of the outstanding literary and ballet critic, art critic, thinker Akim Lvovich Volynsky. The main subject of research is the “philosophy of dance” created by him, the origins of which he found in ancient culture. It is shown that in numerous critical and theoretical texts Volynsky developed a kind of “choreographic literature”, which is the translation of plastic figures of dance into figures of speech. Fascinated by the description of dance in its bodily and sensual forms, driven by his subjective associations and phantasms arising in the whirlwinds of imagination and thought, Volynsky, at the same time, maintained a strictly rational order of critical and analytical discourse. Two previously unpublished articles by Volynsky “Short career” and “Life of a dancer” are attached to the article.