Anna Pavlova

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Anna Pavlovna (Matveïevna) Pavlova (Russian: А́нна Па́вловна (Матве́евна) Па́влова) (12 February 1881 [O.S. 31 January]–23 January 1931) was a Russian ballerina of the late 19th and the early 20th century.

She is widely regarded as one of the most famous and popular classical ballet dancers in history and was most noted as a Principal artist of the Imperial Russian Ballet and the Ballets Russes of Serge Diaghilev. Pavlova is most recognised for the creation of the role The Dying Swan and with her own company, would become the first ballerina to tour ballet around the world.

Contents 1 Personal life and career 2 Death 3 Other points of her legacy 4 Notes 5 External links

[edit] Personal life and career

Pavlova was born two months premature on [O.S. 31 January] 1881, in Ligovo, a suburb (now neighborhood) of Saint Petersburg, then the capital of the Russian Empire. Her mother was an impoverished laundress named Lyubov Pavlova. The identity of her father has been open to debate: she later claimed her father (who was of possible Jewish origin)^[1] had died when she was two years old. The newspaper The Saint Petersburg Gazette published an article in 1913 claiming that her father was a banker named Poliakov, and that her mother's second husband, Matvey Pavlov, had adopted her at the age of three, by which she acquired her last name

Pavlova's passion for the art of ballet was sparked when her mother took her to a performance of Marius Petipa's original production of The Sleeping Beauty at the Imperial Mariinsky Theatre. The lavish spectacle made a profound impression on the young Pavlova, and at the age of eight her mother took her to audition for the renowned Imperial Ballet School. She was rejected due to her age and for what was considered to be a "sickly" physique, but she was finally accepted at the age of ten in 1891. She made her first appearance in a ballet as a cupid in Petipa's Un conte de fées (A Fairy Tale), which the ballet master staged especially for the students of the school.

The young Pavlova's years at the Imperial Ballet School were difficult, as the technique of classical ballet did not come easily to her. Her extremely arched feet, thin ankles, and long limbs clashed with the small, but strong and compact body in favor for the ballerina at the time. Her fellow students taunted her with such nicknames as The broom and La petite sauvage. Undeterred, Pavlova trained relentlessly to improve her technique. She took extra lessons from the great teachers of the day—Christian Johansson, Pavel Gerdt and Nikolai Legat. In 1898 she entered the classe de perfection of Ekaterina Vazem, former Prima ballerina of the Saint Petersburg Imperial Theatres.

During her final year at the Imperial Ballet School, she performed many soloist roles with the principal company. She graduated in 1899 at age 18, being allowed to enter the Imperial Ballet a rank ahead of corps de ballet as a coryphée. She made her debut with the Imperial Ballet performing a variation in Pavel Gerdt's Les Dryades prétendues (The False Dryads), set to music taken from Cesare Pugni's score for Jules Perrot's romantic ballet Éoline, ou La Dryade. Her performance garnered praise from the critics, particularly the great critic and historian Nikolai Bezobrazov, who praised the young dancer for her " ... natural ballon, lingering arabesques, and frail femininity.".

At the height of Petipa's strict academicism, the public was at first somewhat reserved in their reaction to Pavlova's unique style, which was an unusual combination of an extraordinary dance gift that paid little heed to academic rules: she frequently performed with bent knees, poor turnout, misplaced port de bras and incorrectly placed tours. Such a style in many ways harkened back to the time of the romantic ballet and the great ballerinas of old.

Pavlova performed in various classical variations, pas de deux and pas de trois in such ballets as La Camargo, Le Roi Candaule, Marcobomba and The Sleeping Beauty. Her enthusiasm often led her astray—once during a performance as the river Thames in Petipa's The Pharaoh's Daughter her energetic double pique turns led her to lose her balance, and she ended up landing in the prompter's box. Her weak ankles caused her great difficulty during a performance of the variation as the fairy Candide in Petipa's The Sleeping Beauty, leading the ballerina to revise the fairy's hops en pointe, much to the surprise of the old Ballet Master. She nevertheless tried to imitate the great virtuosas of the day, particularly Pierina Legnani, Prima ballerina assoluta of the Imperial Theatres. Once during class she attempted Legnani's fouettés, causing her teacher Pavel Gerdt to fly into a rage. He exclaimed "Leave acrobatics to others ... it is positively more than I can bear to see the pressure such steps put on your delicate muscles and the severe arch of your foot. I beg you to never again try to imitate those who are physically stronger than you. You must realize that your daintiness and fragility are your greatest assets. You should always do the kind of dancing which brings out your own rare qualities instead of trying to win praise by mere acrobatic tricks."

Pavlova rose through the ranks quickly, as she became a favorite of the old maestro Petipa. It was from old maestro himself that Pavlova learned the title role in Paquita, Princess Aspicia in The Pharaoh's Daughter, Queen Nisia in Le Roi Candaule, and Giselle. She was named coryphée in 1902, première danseuse in 1905, and finally prima ballerina in 1906 after a resounding performance in Giselle. Petipa would revise many grand pas for Pavlova, as well as many supplemental variations. She was much celebrated by the fanatical balletomanes of Tsarist Saint Petersburg. Her legions of fans called themselves the Pavlovatzi.

When the prima ballerina assoluta of the Imperial Theatres Mathilde Kschessinska was pregnant in 1901, she coached Pavlova in the role of Nikya in La Bayadère. Kschessinska, not wanting to be upstaged, was certain Pavlova would fail miserably in the role, as she was considered technically inferior due to her small ankles and lithe legs. Instead audiences became enchanted with Pavlova and her frail, ethereal look, which fit the role perfectly, particularly in the scene The Kingdom of the Shades.

Her feet were extremely rigid, so she strengthened her pointe shoe by adding a piece of hard wood on the soles for support and curving the box of the shoe. At the time, many considered this "cheating", for a ballerina of the era was taught that she, not her shoes, must hold her weight en pointe. In Pavlova's case this was extremely difficult, as the shape of her feet required her to balance her weight on her little toes. Her solution became, over time, the precursor of the modern pointe shoe, as pointe work became less painful and easier for curved feet. According to Margot Fonteyn's biography, Pavlova did not like the way her invention looked in photographs, so she would remove it or have the photographs altered so that it appeared she was using a normal pointe shoe. ^[2]

In the first years of the Ballets Russes Pavlova worked briefly for Sergei Diaghilev. Originally she was to dance the lead in Mikhail Fokine's The Firebird, but refused the part, as she could not come to terms with Igor Stravinsky's avant-garde score, and the role was given to Tamara Karsavina. All her life Pavlova preferred the melodious "musique dansante" of the old maestros such as Cesare Pugni and Ludwig Minkus, and cared little for anything else which strayed from the salon-style ballet music of the 19th century.

Upon leaving Russia, Pavlova moved to London, England, settling in Hampstead, where she lived for the remainder of her life and exerted a great deal of influence on the development of British ballet. Her former home Ivy House is located on North End Roa] in the Golders Green area of London. It is now the London Jewish Cultural Centre but a blue plaque marks it as Pavlova's former home and a site of significant historial interest. ^[3][4]

By the mid 1900s she founded her own company and performed throughout the world, with a repertory consisting primarily of abridgements from the Imperial Petipa works, and specially choreographed pieces for herself. The ballet writer Cyril Johnson described that "her bourrées were like a string of pearls".

Her most famous showpiece was The Dying Swan, choreographed for her by Michel Fokine in 1905, danced to Le Cygne from The Carnival of the Animals by Camille Saint-Saëns. Victor Dandré, her manager and companion, may have been her husband (she deliberately clouded this issue).

[edit] Death

While touring in The Hague, Netherlands, Pavlova was told that she had pleurisy and needed an operation. She was also told that she would never be able to dance again if she had this operation so she refused to have the operation saying "If I can't dance then I'd rather be dead." Three weeks later she died of pleurisy, three weeks short of her 50th birthday. She was holding her costume from "The Dying Swan" when she spoke her last words; "Play the last measure very softly." The end for Pavlova came in the Hotel Des Indes in The Hague, which shows a plaque on the wall.

In accordance with old ballet tradition, on the day she was to have next performed, the show went on as scheduled, with a single spotlight circling an empty stage where she would have been. Memorial services were held in the Russian Orthodox Church in London. Anna Pavlova was cremated, and her ashes placed in a columbarium at Golders Green Crematorium, where her urn was subsequently adorned with her ballet shoes. In 2001 there was an attempt to move her remains to the Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow in accordance with her requests. After considerable controversy, the request was turned down.^[5]

[edit] Other points of her legacy

• The Pavlova dessert was named after her.
• Anna Pavlova once said that the country that would produce the best ballerina in history would be the United States because of all the different cultures that came together there.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Notes

[edit] External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Anna Pavlova

• Anna Pavlova in Australia – 1926, 1929 Tours - programs and ephemera held by the National Library of Australia
• Pictures of Anna Pavlova - digitised and held by the National Library of Australia
• Creative Quotations from Anna Pavlova
• Andros on Ballet
• Heroine Worship: Anna Pavlova, The Swan
• Anna Pavlova on Encyclopaedia Britannica

v • d • e Ballet General information History of ballet · Ballet timeline · Glossary of ballet · List of ballets · Ballet music · Ballet company · Ballet Portal Ballet by genre Classical ballet · Contemporary ballet · Neoclassical ballet · Character dance Ballet by region British ballet  · French ballet  · Italian ballet  · Russian ballet  · Ballet technique Balanchine method · Cecchetti method · Vaganova method · En pointe  · Royal Academy of Dance Ballet apparel Ballet shoes · Pointe shoes · Tutu