Serge Lifar

Dancer and choreographer, born in Kiev, Ukraine. He was a student and friend of Diaghilev, whose Ballets Russes company he joined in 1923. He scored his first triumph as a choreographer in Paris with Créatures de Promethée (1929), and became the guiding genius behind the Paris Opéra (1929–58). He wrote several works on ballet, including a biography of Diaghilev (1940).

Serge Lifar (Ukrainian: Сергій Михайлович Лифар, Serhiy Mykhaylovych Lyfar) (April 2, 1905 - December 15, 1986) was a ballet dancer and choreographers of Ukrainian origin, famous as one of the greatest male ballet dancers of the 20th century.

From rather unpromising beginnings, Serge Lifar rose to the ranks of leading international ballet dancers and choreographers of the twentieth century. In Kiev at the age of 15, he was rejected by Bronislava Nijinska as a student in her ballet school but persisted in his dream to become a dancer: he enrolled in the Kiev Opera Ballet where Nijinska taught as well.

In 1923, Diaghilev asked Nijinska to summon five of her best male students from Kiev to join the Ballets Russes.

Lifar's persistence, charm and manipulation paid off by 1924, when, following private tutoring by renowned ballet master Cecchetti, he was enlisted as the latest of Diaghilev's "favorites" (joining the long, distinguished list of dancer-lovers that includes Vaslav Nijinsky, Léonide Massine, and Anton Dolin, among others).

Despite grumblings in the company, Lifar had very real triumphs in Massine's Zephyr et Flore (1924) and Balanchine's La Chatte (1926).

Given an inch of acclaim, Lifar kept taking so much that even the world-devouring Diaghilev became exasperated at his extreme ambition and self-promotion.

Lifar's own first ballet, Renard (1929, to a score by Igor Stravinsky), though energetic and athletic, proved to be no masterpiece.

After Diaghilev's death in August 1929, with the Ballets Russes in disarray, Lifar was not at a loss for long. Jacques Rouché of the Paris Opera Ballet invited him to star in a production in the tradition of Diaghilev to be choreographed by Balanchine. He was soon engaged as the ballet master and director at the Paris Opera Ballet, where he remained in charge, with one significant interruption, until 1957.

During his tenure at the Paris Opera, Lifar was responsible for reviving the ballet in 1929, carrying on the Diaghilev tradition with productions of Ballets Russes classics, developing a strong presence for male dancers, and employing renowned choreographers such as Balanchine, Massine, and Frederick Ashton.

In his autobiography, Lifar coyly stated that "dance is my mistress" to avoid substantive revelations about his romantic entanglements with men and women of influence. Although the appearance of collaboration led to Lifar's "banishment for life" from the Paris Opera Ballet in 1944, he was back at work there by 1947.

Despite later upheavals such as his stormy exit from the Opera Ballet in 1957, Lifar's stature as a major force in international dance with a direct link to the great Diaghilev continued undiminished until his death in Lausanne, Switzerland on December 15, 1986.

In the summer of 1994 on the stage of the National Ukraine Opera the First International Ballet Contest was held named after Serge Lifar. The Sixth Lifar International Ballet Competition was held in April, 2006.