Roman Jasinski: A Gypsy Prince from the Ballet Russe.

Roman Jasinski: A Gypsy Prince from the Ballet Russe

By Cheryl Forrest and Georgia Snoke.

Tulsa Ballet, 2008. 336 pages.

Illustrated. $24.95.

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Food, or the lack of it, shadowed Czeslaw Roman Jasinski's early life in his native Poland. It also shadowed his nascent dance career after he left Warsaw for Paris. Many years later, he still recalled the three-month span when he ate spaghetti (sans sauce) every day while he awaited a promised job.

His most positive experiences at that time (1928-32), with its vagabond journey from one temporary dance job to another, came from the dance professionals he met: Bronislava Nijinska, George Balanchine, Lubov Egorova, Boris Kniasev, Olga Spessivtzeva, and Serge Lifar. Gradually his career took shape. In 1932 he began 15 productive years as a principal with the new Ballets Russes de Monte-Carlo.

Moscelyne (Moussia) Larkin, a teenager of American Indian descent, was accepted into the company and into his heart. Theirs was a long and happy marriage that led to a school and company of their own Tulsa Ballet.

There was no special luck in all of this, just hard work and the patience one associates with an artistic quest. Add to this the appreciation and affection lavished on his life story by authors Cheryl Forrest and Georgia Snoke.