Biography on anna pavlova the dying
The Dying Swan
Anna Pavlova, 1881 - 1931, was my mother's Godmother. Despite having been brought up in the Russian countryside by her grandmother, and being educated at the Imperial Ballet School, in St Petersburg, and despite travelling the world (she performed in over forty different countries), from 1911 until her death Pavlova made her home in London, when work and war permitted (so she was an immigrant - and very welcome too!)
Ivy House and garden on an OS map from about 100 years ago |
And it was here that she befriended my Grandmother, Marjorie Cecil Napier Ford, later Marjorie Cecil McMullin.
In recent times the house was used by the London Jewish Cultural Centre, although a ballet school shared the premises. In more recent times it was destined to become flats, and the extensive gardens, with their swan lake, were disappearing,
but as I have just discovered the house is now becoming St Anthony's School for Girls (Virtute Adepta)
which proclaims itself as an exciting Catholic sister school to the highly successful St Anthony's School for Boys in Hampstead.....
(1881-1931) Anna Pavlova was a Russian prima ballerina during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. After attending the Imperial Ballet School, she made her company debut in 1899 and quickly became a prima ballerina. Her breakthrough performance was in The Dying Swan in 1905, which became her signature role. She joined the Ballet Russe in 1909 and formed her own company in 1911. Anna Matveyevna Pavlovna Pavlova was born on February 12, 1881 — a cold and snowy winter's day — in St. Petersburg, Russia. Her mother, Lyubov Feodorovna was a washerwoman and her stepfather, Matvey Pavlov, was a reserve soldier. The identity of Pavlova's biological father is unknown, though some speculate that her mother had an affair with a banker named Lazar Poliakoff. As a child, Pavlova preferred to believe she was a product of an earlier marriage. She told people her mother had once been married to a man named Pavel, who died when she was just a toddler. Yet this Pavel remains something of a mystery to historians and biographers. From early on, Pavlova's active imagination and love of fantasy drew her to the world of ballet. Looking back on her childhood, Pavlova described her budding passion for ballet accordingly: "I always wanted to dance; from my youngest years...Thus I built castles in the air out of my hopes and dreams." Although they were poor, Pavlova and her mother were able to see a performance of The Sleeping Beauty at the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg when she was 8 years old. Captivated by what she saw, the wide-eyed little girl declared she was resolved to become a ballet dancer. Her mother enthusiastically supported her pursuit. Within just two years, Pavlova was accepted at the St. Petersburg Imperial Ballet School, after passing the entrance exam with flying colors. The school was directed by famed ballet master Marius Petipa. At the Imperial Ballet School, Petipa and Pavlova's teachers, Anna Pavlova (1881 - 23 January 1931) was a Russian prima ballerina of the late 19th and the early 20th centuries. She was a principal artist of the Imperial Russian Ballet and the Ballets Russes of Sergei Diaghilev. Pavlova is most famous for her creation of the role of The Dying Swan (La Mort du Cygne). With her own company, she became the first ballerina to tour around the world. Ernst Oppler was a German painter and printmaker, born in Hannover on September 19, 1867, the son of the architect Edwin Oppler and brother of Alexander Oppler. Both brothers trained at the Munich Academy and later established studios in Berlin, where they became members of the well-known Berlin Secession. Ernst Oppler was an impressionist painter of portraits, interiors, landscapes and movement, particularly notable for his prints of dancers. Ernst Oppler died in Berlin on March 1, 1929. Oppler's works are in the collections of many museums including the National Gallery in Berlin, the Neue Pinakothek in Munich, and the Modern Gallery in Venice. ne of the first biographies I ever read was about Anna Pavlova. When I was 11, I took it out of the library, just before seriously beginning my own study of ballet. Even the name of this woman born half a world away had an enchanted quality to it: the two v's were winged water birds, and the word "love" - slightly in disguise, altered by an a - also made an appearance. Her story gripped me, of course. The legendary prima ballerina was born in St. Petersburg in 1881 during the cold whiteness of a Russian winter. When she was 8, her mother took her to a performance of "The Sleeping Beauty," and Anna experienced an epiphany - a baptism by ballet. This and only this was what she wanted to do with her life, and two years later she was admitted to the Imperial School of Ballet. Her exceptional gifts were immediately visible, and after graduating, at 18, she made her company debut in a pas de trois in "La Fille Mal Gardee"; she never danced in the corps de ballet. In 1907, Pavlova started to appear abroad, and in 1909 she danced in Diaghi
Anna was taught by Italian Maestro Enrico Cecchetti, who, after the Russian Revolution and the First World War, was invited by Arturo Toscanini to take command of the ballet school at Milan's La Scala, where Anna later visited him. Cecchetti is reported to have said: I can teach everything connected w
Anna Pavlova
Who Was Anna Pavlova?
Early Life
Biographical/Historical Information
Anna Pavlova / By Allegra Kent
The Swan
Pavlova was already an acclaimed ballerina when, in 1905, Michel Fokine choreographed "The Dying Swan" for her to music by Saint-Saens; it became her personal emblem. In fact, a woman imitating a swan is an absurd idea. The body parts don't match, and the bird is graceful only when swimming. A swan's foot is a webbed black affair that the bird can shake out like an old dishrag before folding it neatly under a wing. Pavlova en pointe and in motion had no duckish quality whatsoever. "The Dying Swan" is not about a woman impersonating a bird, it's about the fragility of life - all life - and the passion with which we hold on to it. Pavlova's sheer dramatic intensity forcibly conveyed this truth to the audience, and the work was an instant success.
Credit: The New York Times