Athleticism – Still Images and Gifs
"In the USSR of the 1920s, this emphasis on the physical education of the younger generation was an essential element in the overall system of Communism. Practice in gymnastics and acrobatics was considered a good way to prepare youth for both labor and defense by developing attentiveness, mental preparation, and muscular grace and strength. Yet while the title and photo from Yakobson’s Sports March suggests that he is hewing to this Soviet belief, he also seems to have tweaked the athleticism toward art, to have borrowed qualities from gymnastic poses but rendered them on the clean, open line of ballet bodies. This step inaugurates a practice of movement sampling that Yakobson will continue in his choreography, using athletic movements as a neutral vocabulary rather than part of a Marxist-Leninist cultural framework."