Holiday home in Positano
Casetta Renata

Léonide Massine at Positano Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes influenced the destiny of dance even more than one might imagine. Who would think that the ancestry of the Positano Léonide Massine Prize for the Art of Dance could be traced back – albeit somewhat indirectly – to that famed dance company? The year was 1917. Léonide Massine and the Ballets Russes were in Naples, dancing at the Teatro San Carlo. Afterwards, Russian writer Misha Semenov invited Massine to take a few days off as his guest at the water-mill he had bought in Arienzo, near Positano. Massine fell under the spell of the Amalfi coast, and was so enchanted with the three islets called Li Galli that he decided they must be his. Massine finally managed to acquire the islands in 1922, and thereafter used them as a summer place for himself and his family. After his death, Li Galli were bought by Nureyev. Alberto Testa – former dancer, now choreographer, dance critic, scholar and teacher of dance history, not to mention founder and artistic director of the Positano Prize – was chosen by Massine in 1952 to portray Judas in his "Laudes Evangeli", first performed the following year in Perugia and after that elsewhere in Italy and Europe. Testa recalls that the rehearsals of this "choreographic mystery" were held in Positano in August, and that Massine would arrive from Li Galli by boat in the morning and return there in the evening. The idea of creating an annual dance award for Italian artists (who were, and often still are, obliged to search their fortune abroad) was born in 1969. In 1979, the year of Massine's death, the Positano Prize was named after the great choreographer who so loved the area. A gala performance is held on the first Saturday of September, when the prize is awarded to promising young dancers as well as to étoiles of international fame. (Patrizia Vallone for Ballet Dance Magazine, September 2004)