Leonide Massine (1896-1979), next to Fokine and Nijinsky the moving spirit behind the Ballets Russes , collaborated with almost all the major artists of the age and is held by dance experts to be one of the most important choreographers of the 20th century. The present study is the first attempt to take a systematic theatre-studies approach to the extensive and stylistically multi-faceted oeuvre of a choreographer much influenced by the aesthetic creed of Diaghilev and to evaluate it against the background of developments in dance and theatre in the first half of the 20th century.