Tamara Karsavina
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Tamara Platonovna Karsavina, St. Petersburg, circa 1915 |
Tamara Platonovna Karsavina [
1] [
2] (
March 10,
1885 –
May 26,
1978) was a famous
Russian
ballerina who eventually settled in
England, where she helped found the
Royal Academy of Dancing in
1920.
Karsavina was born in
St. Petersburg, Russia, the daughter of the dancer
Platon Karsavin. Beautiful and talented from an early age, Karsavina quickly moved through the ranks of professional ballet. After graduating from the
Imperial Ballet School, she was a leading ballerina of Tsar's
Imperial Ballet, dancing the whole of the
Petipa repertory. Her most famous roles were Lise in
La Fille Mal Gardee, Medora in
Le Corsaire, and the Tsar Maiden in
The Little Humpbacked Horse.
The choreographer
George Balanchine said he had fond memories of watching her when he was a student at the Mariinsky. It was during the late 1910s that she began travelling regularly to Paris to dance with the
Ballet Russe of
Sergei Diaghilev. It was during her years with the company that she created many of her most famous roles in the ballets of
Mikhail Fokine, including
Petrushka, and
Le Spectre de la Rose. She was perhaps most famous for creating the title role in Fokine's
The Firebird (a role originally to be created by
Anna Pavlova) with her occasional partner
Vaslav Nijinsky.
She left
Russia in 1917 after the
revolution, and subsequently continued her association with the
Ballet Russe as a leading Ballerina.
Her wonderful memoir,
Theatre Street, focus on her training to be a ballerina, and her career at the Mariinsky and for the Ballet Russes. In these memoirs Karsavina comes across as intelligent, funny, and a wonderful story-teller. Tamara Karsavina was renowned for her beauty, and in the ultra-competitive world of ballet, she was almost universally beloved. However Karsavina did have a rivalry with
Anna Pavlova. In the film
A Portrait of Giselle Karsavina recalls a "wardrobe malfunction": during one performance her shoulder straps fell and she accidentally exposed herself, and Pavlova reduced an embarrassed Karsavina to tears.
In
1917 she married diplomat
Henry James Bruce and moved to
London, where she taught and wrote about ballet. Among her pupils was the English ballerina
Margot Fonteyn. Although married, she did have a brief affair with notable
Hollywood socialite and writer
Mercedes de Acosta. The two were as much friends as they were lovers, and Karsavina was one of the few who continued to be friendly toward de Acosta following the controversial autobiography released by the latter, exposing many of her (de Acosta's)
lesbian relationships with Hollywood's elite to the public.
* [
3]
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Karsavina: You compose thy airy dance like a song...*
Danceworks: brief essays*
The Ballerina Gallery - Tamara Karsavina
