George Balanchine
1904 – 1983
Russian

The most famous and prolific choreographer of his era. He began as a member of Diaghilev's legendary Ballet Russes, which combined romanticism with the avant-garde. In 1948 he founded the New York City Ballet, where he practiced a sparer and more intellectual form of choreography, but one still suffused with the joy of movement and music.

Contemporaries
1896–1974Giorgiy Zhukov
1883–1936Grigoriy Zinoviev
1927–2013Tatyana Zaslavskaya
1884–1937Yevgeny Zamyatin
1931–2007Boris Yeltsin
1895–c. 1939Nikolai Yezhov
1896–1934Lev Vygotsky
1883–1954Andrey Vyshinsky
1879–1940Leon Trotsky
1828–1910Count Leo Tolstoy
1902–1982Mikhail Suslov
1862–1911Peter Stolypin
c. 1886–1934Alexandre Stavisky
1906–1977Alexey Stakhanov
1918–2008Alexander Solzhenitsyn
1891–1945Maria Skobtsova
1928–2014Eduard Shevardnadze
Born 1948Natan Shcharansky
1921–1989Andrey Sakharov
1881–1938Alexey Rykov
c. 1871–1916Grigoriy Rasputin
1885–c. 1939Karl Radek
1856–1918Georgiy Plekhanov
1938–1993Rudolf Nureyev
1890–1950Vaslav Nijinsky
1902–1977Alexander Luria
1870–1924Vladimir Lenin
1842–1921Pyotr Kropotkin
1894–1971Nikita Khrushchev
1881–1970Alexander Kerensky
Born 1963Gary Kasparov
Born 1931Mikhail Gorbachev
1880–1942Michel Fokine
1872–1918Alexandra Feodorovna
1877–1926Felix Dzerzhinsky
1872–1929Sergei Diaghilev
1888–1938Nikolay Bukharin
1871–1944Sergey Bulgakov
1923–2011Yelena Bonner
1880–1921Alexander Blok
1909–1997Sir Isaiah Berlin
1899–1953Lavrenti Beria
1838–1906Friedrich Beilstein
1857–1927Vladimir Bekhterev
Born 1948Mikhail Baryshnikov
1920–1992Isaac Asimov