Born in Kazan, Russia, Novikoff studied at the Imperial Ballet School. He fled to China because of the 1917 Russian Revolution at age 17, where he taught dance to the children of Russian soldiers.
In 1923, he immigrated to the United States, where he continued teaching ballet until his death. He founded the Novikoff School of Russian-American Ballet in the early 1950s and received the Governor's Heritage Award (of the state of Washington) in 1989. Novikoff followed in the footsteps of another preeminent ballet teacher Dame Ninette de Valois, founder of the Royal Ballet of London. Incidentally, she was also 102 when she died.