Lytvynenko, Vasyl

Lytvynenko, Vasyl [Литвиненко, Василь], b 2 February 1899 in Savelevka, Saratov gubernia, Russia, d 3 February 1967 in Moscow. Choreographer, ballet dancer, and singer. A graduate of K. Aleksiutovich’s ballet school in Saratov (1918), Mikhail Mordkin’s dance studio in Tbilisi (1922), and the Tbilisi Conservatory (1923), he worked as a ballet soloist and choreographer at the opera and ballet theaters of Saratov (1918–21), Tbilisi (1922–6, 1935–44), Kharkiv (Kharkiv Theater of Opera and Ballet; 1927–31, 1946–56), and Kyiv (Kyiv Theater of Opera and Ballet; 1932–4). He staged several ballets in which he himself performed, as Yarosh in Mykhailo Verykivsky’s The Nobleman Kanovsky (the first Ukrainian ballet, premiered 1931 in Kharkiv and 1932 in Kyiv), Major Campbell in Borys Yanovsky’s Ferenji (1932), and Danko in Volodymyr Nakhabin’s Danko (1948). He also danced in the roles of Phoebus in C. Pugni’s La Esmeralda, Basilio in L. Minkus’s Don Quixote, and Siegfried in Peter Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 3 (1993).]