Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A wonderful book on wonderful subjects, September 18, 1999
By A Customer
This beautiful book, with wonderful photographs, and very rare photgraphs, is a tribute to the enduring partnership, both onstage and off, of Ekaterina Maximova and Vladimir Vasiliev, who graduated from the Bolshoi Ballet School and danced with the Bolshoi Ballet for over three decades, whilst still becoming famous in the free world by their performances with various ballet companies in Europe and the Americas. Allowed to come and go freely whilst others defected around them they formed a unique partnership that will never be equalled.It's a tastefully designed book, clearly a labor of love, not only by the author but the many she acknowledges the help of, which I can look at for hours because of the extraordinary photographic content, which needs almost no text. Which is just as well, because, to me, it is written as an almost unconscious parody, with the breathlessness of a true and devoted fan, in the style of a 'voice over' on a flickering black and white soviet documentary about grain harvesting in the Ukraine - and about as interesting. Surely Maximova and Vasiliev are more three dimensional than they are made to appear in this book. It's almost as if the author is afraid of her subjects. Still, this book is worth having for the photographs which speak for themselves.
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7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Extraordinary Photographs, Unbelievable text!, October 25, 1999
By A Customer
In the middle of the Cold War Albert Kahn visited Moscow and eventually produced his volume, 'Days with Ulanova' which has become the touchstone, perhaps, by which almost every other pictorial record of a dancer's work is measured. I find many areas of comparision between that work and Mrs Lazzarini's work. Of course, Mrs Lazzarini has more material to work with, as Maximova and Vasiliev were more active in Russia and Western Europe than Ulanova and this book covers a longer period than Kahn had with Ulanova. However, imitation is not always the sincerest form of flattery, and I was left wondering who this book is aimed at. Pictorially it is for any dance lover, but textually it is the perfect birthday present for an eight year old having her first ballet lessons. Instead of treating Maximova and Vasiliev as two grown ups who dance they are made to appear in this book as two party apparatchiks who dance whilst mouthing the party line, and mouthing it to a cub reporter on her first assignment with 'Komsomolskaya Pravda.'The text really beggars belief, and though I understand that this is not intended as a biography of the dancers a little more of them speaking about themselves 'today' would have been welcome. The cold war has ended, the Berlin Wall is down and Communism is gone from Russia, but you'd never guess it from reading this book. The photographs are undeniably beautiful, a collection of images that are quite unforgettable and a wonderful testament to the talents of two great artists. Sadly, in this volume, the text is the iceberg which sinks this titanic collection of photographs.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
SENSATIONAL PHOTOGRAPHS!, October 2, 2000
Just look at the photographs and tell me who is dancing today like this pair! The answer: Nobody!>From these photographs I'd give all that I own to have seen them dance in person just once. There's page after page of beautiful photographs, sensational photographs that I look at for hours. The book is so well designed too. I don't see anything wrong with the text . I even enjoyed the ackowledgements and anyone who had anything to do with the book should be very proud to be involved in such an endeavour This book makes you feel great to be alive and watching ballet and dance even though I suspect we'll never see the like of Maximova and Vasiliev onstage again.
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