Wassily de Basil

Vasily Grigoryevich Voskresensky (; 27 July 1951), commonly known as Colonel Wassily de Basil, was a Russian ballet impresario.

Biography Vasily Grigoryevich Voskresensky was born in Kovno in the Russian Empire (present-day Lithuania), in 1888 (his year of birth is given alternately as 1880 or 1886). He retired from the Imperial Russian Army as a colonel in the Cossack army, fighting during the First World War in Baku against the Turkish and German forces. He was awarded the Order of St. George by his general, Lazar Bicherakhov, himself referred to as the "last soldier of the Empire" by writer Vlad Olgin.

Voskresensky was demobilised from the army in 1919 and worked as a truck driver in Paris before launching himself as a ballet impresario with his first small ballet touring company in 1921. Hiving off the success of Sergei Diaghilev, by 1923 Voskresensky was doing well enough to hire Olga Smimova and Nikolay Tripolitov as his principal dancers on small tours in France, Germany, Switzerland and Austria.

It was at this point he adopted his stage name Wassily de Basil (essentially Basil de Basil) in 1923 and gave the name of his troupe as Ballet Russe directed by W. de Basil.

Following the death of Diaghilev in 1929, the members of his Ballets Russes went in many directions. Around 1925, Voskresensky partnered with Alexey Tsereteli (also Zereteli) and Ignaty Zon to form the artists agency called Zerbason. In 1929–1930, Voskresensky's ballet troupe acted together with Tsereteli's opera troupe. Voskresensky, Tseretelli and Michel Kachouk, the manager of Feodor Chaliapin, became directors of the Opéra Russe à Paris, a company originally formed by soprano Maria Kousnetsova (also known as Maria Kuznetsova). The ballet gave its first performance in Monte Carlo on January 11, 1932 – the national holiday of Monte Carlo.

Blum and Voskresensky did not agree artistically, leading to a 1934 split, after which Voskresensky formed an arrangement with financier Sol Hurok. and lured away some of Voskresensky's dancers. In addition, Massine sued de Basil in London to regain the intellectual property rights to his own works. He also sued to claim the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo name. The jury decided that Voskresensky owned Massine's ballets created between 1932 and 1937, but not those created before 1932. It also ruled that both successor companies could use the name Ballet Russe — but only Massine & Blum's company could be called Ballet Russe de Monte-Carlo. Voskresensky renamed his company again, as the Covent Garden Russian Ballet. In 1939, he gave the company its final name, the Original Ballet Russe.

Voskresensky brought the Original Ballet Russe on a tour of Australia in 1939–1940,

After his death, he joined many of his ballet dancers and comrades in the Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois Russian Cemetery, Paris.