Leonid Kozlov
American ballet dancer and choreographer
Leonid Kozlov (born February 6, 1947, in Moscow, Soviet Union) is a former principal dancer of the Bolshoi and New York City Ballet. He is also a choreographer, founder, and owner of Kozlov Dance International (KDI) and Youth Dance Festival of New Jersey.
Biography
Kozlov started his dance career by training at the Bolshoi Ballet School at age 12, after he was picked out from his primary school class and told he was to become a dancer. He later joined the Bolshoi company and became a principal dancer, performing lead roles in Romeo and Juliet, Swan Lake, Don Quixote, Giselle, Le Corsaire, The Stone Flower, Spartacus, The Sleeping Beauty, and La Bayadère.
Kozlov met his former wife, Valentina Kozlova, then an apprentice, during the Bolshoi's tour of Paquita in America in 1973. They married later that year. He and Kozlova decided to defect together on September 16, 1979, when they walked out of a garage door at Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles after a tour performance. After asylum was granted to them on September 17, they started their lives in the United States by performing as guest artists internationally in Britain, South America, Australia and across North America. With those international tours, Kozlov had opportunities to work with famous choreographers including George Balanchine, Jerome Robbins, George Abbott, Glen Tetley, and Alvin Ailey.
Kozlov staged his first Nutcracker production for the Australian Ballet at the Sydney Opera House in 1981.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Leonid Kozlov” is american ballet dancer and choreographer. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Leonid, Kozlov and American, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “american ballet dancer and choreographer” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 9, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6526391. VIAF identifies the subject as 103224689. The Library of Congress control number is n85156214. 4 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1947, 1973, 1979 and 1981.
Rights, attribution and provenance may remain disputed even when a general reference summary presents a stable account. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.
- Identifying works and editions
- Tracing reception history
- Finding collection records
The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Leonid Kozlov”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Leonid Kozlov primary sources, Leonid Kozlov archive and Leonid research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Leonid Kozlov”?
- How did later circulation or interpretation alter the work’s reception?
- Which edition, object, performance or recording is being described?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Leonid Kozlov” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.