The most prolific choreographer of the early Soviet period, Fedor Lopukhov was associated with two seemingly contradictory developments in Soviet ballet in the 1920s: his interest in experimental dance, especially his theories of the relationship between movement and music, and his work to restore the ballets of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, notably those of the choreographer Marius Petipa, whose legacy had suffered in the chaotic years following the 1917 Revolution. Lopukhov had some connection to virtually every innovation in early Soviet ballet practice. From his attempt to stage a nonnarrative ballet to Beethoven’s Fourth Symphony in 1923 (Dance Symphony: The Magnificence of the Universe) to choreography that celebrated the October Revolution with avant-garde scenography (The Red Whirlwind, 1924), and finally, the scandals surrounding his collaborations with composer Dmitry Shostakovich (Bolt, 1931; The Bright Stream, 1935), he remained a tireless innovator and theoretician of the new Soviet dance.