And talking Shanghai Balletomania….Boris Volkoff

Follwoing on from yesterday’s Shanghai ballet post….Several ballet companies and troupes had been formed in Shanghai in the 1920s and 1930s including the Shanghai Variety Ballet, who’s company included Boris Vladimirovich Volkoff (1900-1974). Volkoff had started as a child star dancing, at just nine years of age, with his brother Igor on tour in Warsaw under their family name Baskakoff. After the Bolshevik Revolution he undertook a tour of duty in the Red Army where he was assigned to entertain the troops. He then attended the State Academy of Ballet and Choreography in Moscow, the school of the Bolshoi Ballet, and danced with the Mordkin Ballet. During a tour of Siberia he defected and eventually joined the Shanghai Variety Ballet composed of White Russians based in Shanghai and toured with them throughout China, India, Malaya, Burma, Japan, Hawaii and the United States. Volkoff later moved on to join the company of former Ballets Russes dancer Adolph Bolm in the United States in the late 1920s before becoming a leading figure in the Canadian ballet.