Russia in the 1910s. Prince Volkonsky and the biorhythmic anthropology of the actor

Abstract

The article introduces the reader to the little-known figure of Prince Sergei Mikhailovic Volkonsky (1860-1937). It is thanks to him that in the 1910s the expressive system of the French pedagogue and musician François Delsarte and the eurythmies created by Emile Jaques Dalcroze were diffused in Russia. Up to recent years, the work of the artistocratic pedagogue, who created his own personal synthesis of the two practices, influenced Russian theatrical pedagogy and Soviet teaching in music, theatre and film. It is to him that we owe a veritable “new anthropology of the actor” that is here defined as “biorhythm”.