"An artist must know all about love and learn to live without it."
Anna Pavlova
She was called "Divine" and "Delightful". She was said to be the "White Swan" and even the "Swan Fairy". One girl wrote to her parents: “Remember, you said: the one who sees the fairy will be happy all his life. I saw a living fairy - her name is Anna Pavlova.
Brilliant Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova became a legend during her lifetime. Journalists competed with each other in writing stories about her. She read myths about herself in the newspapers - and laughed. Legends surround her name to this day.
She never spoke about her personal life, in which there was a single man. Her whole life - true, real, known and open to everyone - was in dance. And she managed to die before she left the stage ...
The most famous ballerina of the past century, Anna Pavlova (1881-1931), whose life was completely devoted to ballet, about which there were many rumors and legends, wished to keep everything that did not concern her work a secret. Nothing was known about her personal life. And only after her death did the world learn about the beautiful and tragic love story, the secret of which the legendary ballerina kept in her heart for thirty long years.
Anna Pavlova was born on January 31 (February 12), 1881. Her father died very early, and the girl was raised by her mother. Although they lived in constant poverty, Lyubov Feodorovna, moonlighting as a laundress, tried to brighten up the difficult childhood of "beloved Nyura". On the name day and Christmas, the girl was always waiting for gifts brought by a caring, generous hand, and when Anna turned eight, her mother took her to the Mariinsky Theater to the ballet Sleeping Beauty.
So the future dancer fell in love with this art forever, and two years later the thin and sickly girl was admitted to the ballet department of the St. Petersburg Theater School. Eight years later, Pavlova became the leading actress of the Mariinsky Theatre, and after her stunning success as Nikiya in La Bayadère, she was already called the first soloist of the Mariinsky Theater.
Newspapers wrote about the novice ballerina with delight: “Flexible, musical, with a mimicry full of life and fire, she surpasses everyone with her amazing airiness. When Pavlova plays and dances, there is a special mood in the theater.”
She had admirers, men made dates for her, gave gifts, but Anna rejected everyone, and sent generous gifts back to bewildered suitors. She was proud, sensual and unpredictable. “I am a nun of art. Personal life? This is a theater, theater, theater, ”Pavlova did not get tired of repeating.
However, the girl was lying. It was at that time that an incomprehensible, still unknown feeling flared up in the heart of a young ballerina. Relatives knew that she spent all her free time with the rich, handsome Victor Dandre (1870-1944). The new acquaintance came from an aristocratic family belonging to an old noble family. He held a high post of adviser in the Senate, was well educated, spoke several foreign languages and was seriously interested in art. To patronize an aspiring ballerina, as members of the imperial family did before him, seemed prestigious to Victor.
The young entrepreneur became the patron of the young artist, which, however, was quite fashionable at that time. However, Victor did not even think of marrying her. He rented an apartment for Pavlova, equipped one of the rooms for a dance hall, which was an unaffordable luxury for a young ballerina at that time. Each time, meeting the girl after the performance, Victor presented her with luxurious gifts, drove her to expensive restaurants, invited wealthy, intelligent and famous people to the company, and in the evening brought her to an apartment, where he often remained as the owner until the morning.
But the more she got to know Pavlova's new acquaintance, the more clearly she understood that Dandre did not need her at all, and an unequal marriage with a modest girl was impossible for him. And she left him, preferring loneliness to the humiliating position of a kept woman. “At first I struggled,” Pavlova recalled, “beginning with grief just to revel, wanting to prove something to him!” And then, once again following her motto, she returned to work.
She trained again, toured with her favorite theater troupe and danced eight to ten times a week. At that time, another meeting took place in her fate, which changed a lot in the life of a famous dancer. The great choreographer Fokin staged for her to the music of Camille Saint-Saens "The Dying Swan", which forever became the ballerina's crown number and flew around the world. Much later, when the composer met Pavlova, he, delighted with her performance, exclaimed: “Madame, thanks to you, I realized that I wrote amazing music!”
In 1907 the Mariinsky Theater went on tour to Stockholm. It was after these tours in Europe that they first started talking about the brilliant young ballerina, whose performances were such a rapid success that even Emperor Oscar II, admiring Pavlova's talent, handed her the Order of Merit for Art in parting. The enthusiastic crowd greeted the ballerina with a standing ovation. “I was greeted with a whole storm of applause and enthusiastic shouts. I didn’t know what to do, ”recalled Anna Pavlova. It was a real triumph. Anna became famous, she had money, she could already afford a lot. The ballerina tried not to remember Victor.
In the meantime, things were not going well for Dandre. Having turned an unsuccessful deal, the entrepreneur owed a huge amount, which he failed to repay in due time. He ended up in prison without finding the large sum of money that was required to post bail and release him during a lengthy trial. Relatives could not raise funds, and rich friends turned their backs on an unfortunate partner. For Dandre began a difficult period of painful waiting behind bars in loneliness and doubt.
And Anna shone already in Paris. Sergei Diaghilev, who opened a Russian ballet theater in the French capital by inviting Pavlova and Vaslav Nijinsky there, did not miscalculate. They started talking about the Russian theater, people from high society began to visit it, people from all over Europe came to see the Russian ballerina, the theater was invited to Australia and America.
The future seemed so enticing and bright. However, Pavlova unexpectedly left Paris and headed for London. A few months later, Diaghilev learned that his favorite soloist had signed a contract with the famous Braff theater agency, under which she was supposed to dance twice a day in three countries - England, Scotland, Ireland. For this, the dancer received an advance payment - an impressive amount for those times.
She immediately sent the collected money to Russia to release Victor from prison. A few days later, in 1911, he left St. Petersburg and went abroad. “In Paris, I decided that I couldn’t live without Dandre. I immediately called him to my place, ”Pavlova recalled. - We got married in a church, under a secret. He's mine, only mine, and I adore him."
With Victor Dandre
Their marriage remained a secret for many years. Victor kept his promise given on the wedding day to Anna. He swore to keep silent about their union. The former patron responded to generosity with a strong feeling that flared up in his heart so as not to fade away until the last days.
When the contract came to an end, Anna decided to organize her own theater and recruited a troupe of artists. So the former prima of the Mariinsky Theater became the mistress of a small theater. In the same year, she bought a luxurious mansion near London, on the shores of a clean lake, where white swans swam and exotic plants grew around, brought by a ballerina from different parts of the world. It seemed that the fate of the spouses did not depend on anyone else.
Pavlova in his mansion in London
Victor took care of all household chores, the duties of an accountant and a manager. He answered correspondence, conducted business and personal negotiations, organized tours, oversaw costumes and scenery, hired and fired actors. However, Pavlova increasingly expressed displeasure. She reproached her husband, scandalized, shouted, broke dishes and cried.
After long tantrums and tears, the ballerina's spouses reconciled, and it seemed that nothing threatened their family idyll again. Again, Victor solved all his wife's problems, and Anna ran around the house and theatrically shouted to the maid: “Who dared to clean his shoes? Who in my house dares to make tea for him? It's my business!"
However, the emotional and temperamental Pavlova could immediately change her mood and rush at Victor with new insults. Friends who often witnessed these quarrels later asked Dandre how he could endure all this and why he did not leave Anna. He was silent. Apparently, he had his own reasons for this, known only to the two of them.
He idolized her, thanking her for her generosity and generosity. She could not forget him a long-standing offense inflicted in his youth. Whether she forgave him, we are unlikely to ever know. But there was no doubt about the sincerity of Victor Dandre's feelings. When his wife died on January 23, 1931 from pneumonia, just a few days before her fiftieth birthday, Victor, broken by grief, could not return to normal life for a long time.
He did not want to believe that Pavlova was no more. Having created a club of fans of his famous wife, Victor Dandre wanted only one thing - that the great ballerina of the 20th century would be remembered for many years. Unfortunately, the club did not manage to exist for a long time. Nevertheless, the name of the Russian ballerina, the legendary Anna Pavlova, entered the history of world ballet forever.
Anna Pavlova (1881-1931), great Russian ballerina, prima of the Imperial Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg (1899-1913). Participated in the famous "Russian Seasons" by S. P. Diaghilev in Paris. From 1908 she toured abroad, in 1910 she created her own troupe, which performed with triumphant success in many countries of the world.
What is left of the rulers of thoughts - the great artists of the past? A pile of old-fashioned photographs, memoirs of contemporaries - sometimes significant and vivid, sometimes banal lines ...
One of the dancers wrote about Anna Pavlova of that time: “She was a very thin girl, a little taller than average. She had a charming smile and beautiful, slightly sad eyes; long, slender, very beautiful legs with an unusually high rise; the figure is graceful, fragile and so airy that it seemed that it was about to tear itself off the ground and fly away.
In her autobiography, written in 1912, Anna recalled: “My first memory is a small house in St. Petersburg, where we lived together with my mother ... We were very, very poor. But my mother always managed to give me some pleasure on big holidays. Once, when I was eight years old, she announced that we would go to the Mariinsky Theatre. "Here you will see the sorceresses." They showed Sleeping Beauty.
From the very first notes of the orchestra, I became silent and trembled all over, for the first time feeling the breath of beauty above me. In the second act, a crowd of boys and girls danced a wonderful waltz. “Would you like to dance like that?” Mom asked me with a smile. “No, I want to dance like that beautiful lady who portrays the sleeping beauty.”
I love to remember that first evening at the theater that sealed my fate.
“We cannot accept an eight-year-old child,” said the director of the ballet school, where my mother brought me, exhausted by my persistence. “Bring her back when she is ten years old.”
During the two years of waiting, I became nervous, became sad and thoughtful, tormented by the persistent thought of how I could quickly become a ballerina.
Entering the Imperial Ballet School is like entering a monastery, such iron discipline reigns there. I left school at the age of sixteen with the title of the first dancer. Since then, I have been a ballerina. In Russia, apart from me, only four dancers have the official right to this title. The idea to try myself on foreign stages came for the first time when I read the biography of Taglioni. This great Italian danced everywhere: in Paris, and in London, and in Russia. A cast from her leg is still kept with us in St. Petersburg. 
“On this particular evening, Pavlov’s pupil first appeared before the public, and on the same evening she first attracted general attention. Thin and slender, like a reed, and flexible, like her, with the naive face of a southern Spanish woman, airy and ephemeral, she seemed fragile and graceful, like a Sevres figurine.
But sometimes she took on attitudes and poses in which something classical was felt, and if one were to dress her at these moments in an antique peplum, you would get a great resemblance to one of the figurine de Tanagra.
So wrote the ballet critic Valerian Svetlov in 1906, based on fresh memories of Anna Pavlova's final exam.
"A few pages from my life":
“Everywhere our tours were hailed as revelations of a new art...
...From London I went on tour to America, where I danced at the Metropolitan Theatre. Of course, I am delighted with the reception given to me by the Americans. The newspapers published my portraits, articles about me, interviews with me, and - I must tell the truth - a bunch of nonsense stories about my life, my tastes and views. I often laughed, reading this fantastic lie and seeing myself as something that I had never been ...
In Stockholm, King Oscar came every evening to look at us. But what was my astonishment when I was informed that the king was inviting me to the palace. A court carriage was sent for me, and I drove through the streets of Stockholm like a princess.
King Oscar "granted me the Swedish Order of Merit for the Arts".
I was very flattered by such grace; the attention shown to me by the crowd, who accompanied me after one performance from the theater to my hotel, was even dearer to me.
“For a long, long time, the crowd did not want to disperse ... Touched to the core, I turned to my maid, asking: “Why did I charm them so much?”
“Madame,” she answered, “you gave them a moment of happiness, letting them forget their worries for a moment.
I will not forget this answer ... From that day on, my art received meaning and meaning for me.
“From the very beginning of her stage activity, an extraordinary sense of posture and balance provided her with a brilliant performance of the adagio. Pas de bure on pointe across the stage, she performed so quickly and smoothly that it seemed to float in the air.
“She does not dance, but flies,” said Diaghilev
Karsavina: “... many ballerinas are satisfied with the fact that the audience likes it with the brilliance and bravura of their performance. Pavlova, on the other hand, won hearts with her inimitable grace, refinement, some kind of indescribable magic, some kind of spirituality inherent only to her ...
... a lot was said about the special smoothness of the movements of her hands. This was an individual feature of her talent, one of a kind. She used this gift, as well as all her other tricks, obeying that inner instinct that guided her in her amazing performance.
About childishness, which manifested itself in Anna Pavlova, along with her ebullient temperament ... Here is what the biographer says:
“She loved to swim, but how different was her funny way of swimming from her graceful movements on the stage! Dandre and others close to her always took care not to let her near the water, because it was not safe. Instead of entering the water smoothly, gradually, she liked to dive, and each time she did it with a terrible splash.
Once, while diving, she really hurt herself. However, it was impossible to dissuade her from this activity, so every time she bathed, she was closely watched, with life-saving equipment at the ready.
She loved gambling, although it did not fit in with her nature. Playing poker, she was addicted as a child. According to Fokine, who had played cards with her many times, she had no ability to play cards, and yet, if she managed to win a few shillings, there was no end to the delight.
She had an exceptional friendship with Charlie Chaplin. Biographers wondered what was the reason for the fog, because "Pavlova's art was an expression of high humanism, and Chaplin's art consisted in emphasizing the dramatic aspects of life."
Newspapers devoted magnificent reviews to her: “Pavlova is a cloud hovering above the earth, Pavlova is a flame that flashes and fades, this is an autumn leaf driven by a gust of icy wind ...”.
Flipping through the pages of reviews, essays, articles about Pavlova, you notice one peculiarity: not only ballet specialists write about her, but also people who have never practiced ballet before. Such was the mighty power of the impact of her art.
“Only when I saw Pavlova, I understood, felt, felt the power of dance, all its charm, all its beauty, the beauty of that art, where the word is superfluous, where you forget about it ...” writes the critic of the drama theater E. Beskin. Struck by the art of the dancer, he immediately tried to explain and analyze the origins of this great creative force. “She combined the cold technique of classical ballet with the temperament of the art of tag a tag and combined it perfectly, harmoniously, seamlessly with the living emotions of her body. Her teachers Camargo, Taglioni, Fokin, Duncan - on the four strings of this amazing ballet Stradivarius, she learned to sing ... her wondrous songs without words ... "
“Lyrics - the poetry of the heart - an echo, obscure and exciting, of unearthly songs - this is the area of disclosure for Pavlova in its entirety. But in a sly gavotte, Pavlova smiles from under a big straw hat. How thin is this profile, how gentle are the features! This is femininity, a triumphant victory, femininity, charming and attractive ... ”- these words were spoken by theater critic Yuri Sobolev.
“She is a modern person, but she dances old pas. She is a technician, but lives in the soul. She is a naive and unconscious expresser of the subtlest emotions. In her alleged spontaneity, she transforms tradition, she portrays, she plays herself, and therefore she is as much an artist as a dancer, both in one - she plays a dance and dances a game, ”the German ballet critic Oskar Bee draws these conclusions.
In 1925, the well-known critic Akim Volynsky wrote: “In the pace of classical ballet, a peculiar language of the human soul unfolds”
dying swan
The choreographic miniature "The Dying Swan" to the music of C. Saint-Saens was staged for Pavlova by choreographer Mikhail Fokin in 1907.
At first he was not dying. Mikhail Fokin came up with a concert number for Anna to the music of Saint-Saens in just a few minutes. At first, the "Swan" in a weightless tutu, trimmed with fluff, simply floated in serenity. But then Anna Pavlova added the tragedy of untimely death to the famous 130 seconds of dance, and the number turned into a masterpiece, and a “wound” shone on a snow-white tutu - a ruby brooch. A small choreographic composition "The Dying Swan" became her signature number. She performed it, according to contemporaries, completely supernaturally. A spotlight beam descended onto the stage, huge or small, and followed the performer. A figurine dressed in swan down appeared with its back to the audience on pointe shoes. She tossed about in intricate zigzags of death agony and did not descend from pointe shoes until the end of the number. Her strength weakened, she departed from life and left it in an immortal pose, lyrically depicting doom, surrender to the winner - death.
Anna Pavlova died of pneumonia in The Hague during a tour on January 23, 1931, a week before her 50th birthday. They buried her in the costume of a Swan, as the legend says, at the request of the ballerina herself.
The Russian colony in Paris wanted Pavlova to be buried in the Père Lachaise cemetery, where a beautiful monument could be erected to her. But Dandre spoke in favor of Anna being cremated. While touring in India, she was fascinated by Indian funeral ceremonies, during which the body of the deceased is burned on a funeral pyre. She told loved ones that she would like to be cremated. “So later it will be easier to return my ashes to dear Russia,” she seemed to say.
The will of Victor Dandre, Anna Pavlova's husband, states: “I instruct my attorneys to buy ... places for urns containing my ashes and the ashes of my beloved wife Anna, known as Anna Pavlova. I consent to the transfer of the ashes of my wife and also my ashes to Russia, if someday the Russian government will seek the transfer and ... the ashes of Anna Pavlova will receive due honor and respect.
The urn with the ashes of Anna Pavlova in the niche of the columbarium of the Golders Green crematorium
She did not have high-profile titles, did not leave any followers or school. After her death, her troupe was dissolved, property was sold. Only the legend of the great Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova remained, after whom prizes and international awards are named. Feature and documentary films are dedicated to her (Anna Pavlova, 1983 and 1985). The French choreographer R. Petit staged the ballet "My Pavlova" to team music. The numbers of her repertoire are danced by the leading ballerinas of the world. And The Dying Swan is immortalized by Galina Ulanova, Yvette Shovire, Maya Plisetskaya.
http://be.convdocs.org/docs/index-34723.html
Anna Pavlovna Pavlova (Matveevna) (1881-1931), Russian ballerina. From 1899 at the Mariinsky Theatre, in 1909 she participated in the Russian Seasons (Paris), from 1910 she toured with her own troupe in many countries of the world (1913-1914 in Russia). She affirmed the traditions of the Russian dance school abroad. She performed in the main parts of the classical repertoire; became famous in the choreographic sketch "The Dying Swan" to the music of C. Saint-Saens.
Anna Pavlovna Pavlova (according to other sources, Matveevna), Russian ballerina who began classical ballet of the 20th century; teacher, director, producer. Zodiac sign - Aquarius.
A true artist must sacrifice herself to her art.
Like a nun, she has no right to lead a life
desired by most women.
Pavlova Anna Pavlovna
First steps in ballet
Anna Pavlova was born into a family of a soldier and a laundress (according to other sources, the illegitimate daughter of a Jewish banker). At the age of five, Pavlova saw the Sleeping Beauty ballet at the Mariinsky Theater, which sealed her fate. In 1891 she entered the ballet department of the St. Petersburg Theater School, where she studied with E. O. Vazem, P. A. Gerdt. In 1899, after graduating from college, she was accepted into the corps de ballet troupe of the Imperial Ballet of the Mariinsky Theatre.
Tall, slender, with elongated arms and legs with a high rise, in her youth Anna Pavlova did not possess virtuoso technique, did not have a “steel toe”. In order to perform the parts created by M. I. Petipa for Italian virtuosos, Pavlova studied privately with E. Cecchetti in St. Petersburg and with C. Beretta in Milan. In 1906 she became a ballerina, although she had previously performed ballerina parts - Nikiya in La Bayadère (1902), Giselle (1903), Paquita and Medora in Le Corsaire (1904), Kitri in Don Quixote (1905). At the same time, the airy, “sylphic” Pavlova, thanks to her natural temperament, danced the Spanish and demi-character parts of the classical repertoire with great success (a street dancer in Don Quixote, panaderos in Raymond).
Beauty does not tolerate amateurism.
Pavlova Anna Pavlovna
Commonwealth with Fokin
The individuality of the ballerina, the style of her dance, the soaring jump prompted her partner, the future famous choreographer Mikhail Mikhailovich Fokine, to create "Chopiniana" to the music of Fryderyk Chopin (1907). These are stylizations in the spirit of the graceful revived engraving of the era of romanticism. In this ballet she danced the Mazurka and the Seventh Waltz with Vaslav Nijinsky (Young Man). The artist Valentin Alexandrovich Serov immortalized Pavlova's flying arabesque on a poster for the first "Russian Seasons" in Paris (1909).
Anna Pavlova was not only an excellent psychological theater actress who offered a new interpretation of the classical parts of ballets of the 19th century, but also a neo-romantic ballerina, who subtly felt the stylistic features of each production. For her, Fokin composed the famous "Dying Swan" to the music of C. Saint-Saens. She danced in his “Pavilion of Armida” by N. N. Cherepnin, in “Egyptian Nights” (both 1907). Not thinking about innovation and overthrow of the aesthetics of the past, with her appearance, her manner of dancing, she reformed ballet, changed the attitude towards it all over the world.
When I was a child, I wandered among the pines, I thought that success was happiness. I was wrong. Happiness is a moth that charms for a moment and flies away.
Pavlova Anna Pavlovna
Egocentric, very able-bodied, despite external vulnerability, enterprising - after the triumphs in Paris in 1910, Anna Pavlova, at the head of her own troupe, went on a round-the-world ballet tour, performing in the most remote corners of the world with such magnificent Muscovite partners as M. M. Mordkin ( with whom Pavlova was in an intimate relationship for several years) and L. L. Novikov. Her husband V. Dandre became the producer and administrator of the troupe (for some time they hid their matrimonial relationship). Not only Russian performers danced in the troupe.
In recent years
In 1912, Anna Pavlova, having settled in England, bought the Ivy House house (in Hampstead, in one of the districts of London), where she spent a short vacation. She adored animals, birds, flowers, of which there were always many in her house. In her studio, the ballerina began to teach English children the art of ballet, later they became part of her troupe (she did not have her own children). Yearning for the great classical performances of the imperial stage, during endless tours she was forced to dance miniatures or small ballets, which the choreographer N.I. puppets”, “Gavot”, Russian dance, etc.), Pavlova set for herself a number of impressionistic artless numbers that made a huge impression only in her heartfelt and elegant performance (“California poppy”, “Chrysanthemum”, “Autumn leaves”, “ Japanese Butterfly”, “Dying Rose”, etc.). Many miniatures of Anna Pavlova were created under the influence of the dances of the peoples of the world, which she was interested in during her numerous travels. This fragile-looking woman was tireless. She acted in films, notably playing Fenella in the silent film The Mute of Porticci (1930). Rare is the film recording of Pavlova in The Dying Swan. It was her favorite number. “Prepare my Swan costume,” she said before her death, trying to cross herself, as if before going on stage. It is symbolic that she passed away at the age of 50 as a world celebrity at the end of her career. She didn't need a life without dancing.
An artist must know everything about love and learn to live without it.
Pavlova Anna Pavlovna
Anna Pavlova is unique. She did not have high-profile titles, did not leave any followers or school. After her death, her troupe was dissolved, property was sold. Only the legend of the great Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova remained, after whom prizes and international awards are named. Feature and documentary films are dedicated to her (Anna Pavlova, 1983 and 1985). The French choreographer R. Petit staged the ballet "My Pavlova" to team music. The numbers of her repertoire are danced by the leading ballerinas of the world. And Pavlov's "The Dying Swan" was immortalized by Galina Ulanova, Ivet Shovire, Maya Plisetskaya. V. A. Mainietse, encyclopedia Cyril and Methodius
Anna Pavlova - "Russian ballerina, performed at the Mariinsky Theatre. Participated in the Russian Seasons in Paris. Toured with her own troupe in many countries of the world. Performed in the main roles of the classical repertoire; became famous in the choreographic etude "The Dying Swan" to the music of C. Sen - Sansa.
Fairy tales sometimes do come true, no matter what the skeptics say. The story of a ballerina, the daughter of a washerwoman and a retired soldier, miraculously ascended to the pinnacle of fame, wealth and success - no matter what the Christmas story, recognized to give us hope for mercy and the grace of Providence. But this plot is a true scheme of the life of the brilliant ballerina Anna Pavlova. Scheme - because everything magical and simple happens only in a fairy tale.
Little is known about Anna Pavlova's childhood. The ballerina's favorite memory was a sweet story about how, at the age of eight, on Christmas Day, mother Nyura (that was the name of her daughter at home) took her daughter to the Mariinsky Theater to the ballet Sleeping Beauty. Of course, this was an epochal event not only in the life of poor Nyura, but, as it turned out later, in the history of ballet, for the girl immediately decided that she would dance and certainly be the best.
Today's story is about the greatest Russian ballerina, not just a star, but a treasure of the world ballet scene, Anna Pavlova. This is a dancer who turned the world of Russian ballet upside down - it was with her that a new era of sensuality and sophistication in ballet began. Everything artificial, feigned faded into the background, the soul became higher than the race for mastery. Before the advent of Anna Pavlova, Russian ballet was dominated by the era of Italian dancers who were engaged abroad. Their dance was as pompous as it was virtuoso. Anna Pavlova broke this tradition not only with impeccable choreography, but also with the endless sincerity of her dance.
Little is known about Anna Pavlova's personal life - she published a book of memoirs, but we learn almost nothing about the dancer's life from this story: it is entirely devoted to art. Pavlova was born in February 1881 in the family of a simple washerwoman Lyubov Fedorovna Pavlova, but it is assumed that she was the illegitimate daughter of a rather wealthy merchant Lazar Polyakov. This can explain the fact that her mother was able to pay for her studies at the Imperial Ballet School, where Anechka did not enter without difficulty - they did not want to take her because of her poor health. The girl was born seven months old, suffered from anemia, frequent colds and excessive stoop. However, the famous Marius Petipa already then saw the young talent and was not mistaken.
Anna devoted herself to her studies, she was not afraid not of the difficult conditions of training, nor many hours of training, nor numerous prohibitions, nor separation from her relatives - she was born for ballet and dreamed only of it. There are legends about Pavlova's self-denial - she went on stage with a fever, sick, exhausted, with sprained ligaments, and in America she even performed with a broken leg.
After graduating from college, Anna was accepted into the troupe of the Mariinsky Theater, and in 1906 she became the leading ballerina of the troupe. Anna also had an idol - Maria Taglioni, an Italian dancer, whom Pavlova looked up to and who inspired her to creativity and hard work. Did Anechka know how much she would surpass her inspirer?
His most famous part - a choreographic miniature dying swan staged by Fokin, she first performed in 1907. Later, this production will become an unconditional symbol of Russian ballet.
In 1910, Pavlova left the Mariinsky Theater and created her own troupe, which successfully and extensively toured abroad. After 1914, Anna moved to live in England and never returned to Russia. She connects her fate with the scandalous Russian lawyer Victor Dandre. Their relationship is mysterious and hidden in a veil of secrecy. Some sources believe that Victor suffered from the antics and whims of a famous dancer, but humbly endured them, being endlessly in love. Others argue that he was an incredible dictator, did not spare the ballerina's health and strength, and being not only a life partner, but also Pavlova's impresario, arranged incredible tours in terms of load - it happened that concerts followed one after another every day without days off for months! What really happened, who was the culprit of such a grueling tour schedule: the ballerina herself or her merciless companion, we seem to no longer know.
Anna Pavlova died in Holland, during a tour, on January 23, 1931, from acute pleurisy: on the way from France, she caught a bad cold and also received a significant chest bruise. Doctors recommended an immediate operation, but for some reason the operation was postponed, and on January 19, Anna Pavlova gave her last concert in The Hague, being very weak. Who was the initiator of the cancellation of the operation - the ballerina herself or her companion Victor, remained unknown.
Russian ballet dancer
Little is known about the true life of Anna Pavlova. She herself wrote an excellent book, but this book dealt more with the quivering and bright secrets of her art, which contained a lot of improvisation, than with her biography itself. Her husband and impresario Victor Dandre also wrote a beautiful and expressive book about her, where a reflection of a living feeling trembled and the pain of a heart stunned by the sudden loss of a dear and beloved being. But this book is just a small touch to the mysterious that was, sparkled, shimmered in Anna Pavlova, which was her very essence, her breath - Inspiration that lived in her entire creative nature!
Probably, the secret of Pavlova's difference from other dancers who shone on the stage before and after her lay in the unique individuality of her character. Contemporaries said that, looking at Pavlova, they saw not dancing, but the embodiment of their dream of dancing. She seemed airy and unearthly as she flew across the stage. There was something childish, pure, inconsistent with real life in her speech. She chirped like a bird, flashed like a child, wept and laughed lightly, going from one to the other instantly. She was always like this: both at 15 and at 45.
Newspapers devoted magnificent reviews to her: “Pavlova is a cloud hovering above the earth, Pavlova is a flame that flashes and fades, this is an autumn leaf driven by a gust of icy wind ...”.
“Flexible, graceful, musical, with a full of life and fire facial expressions, she surpasses everyone with her amazing airiness. How quickly and magnificently this bright, versatile talent flourished, ”the press spoke enthusiastically about Anna Pavlova’s performances.
One of the ballerina's friends and devoted followers, Natalya Vladimirovna Trukhanova, later recalled with sincere bitterness: “How I always regretted that I could not sketch her Dance! It was something unique. She just lived in it, you can't say otherwise. She was the very Soul of the Dance. Only now the Soul is hardly expressible in words ..!
The image that immortalized the ballerina is, of course, the Swan. At first he was not dying. Choreographer and friend Nikolai Fokin came up with a concert number for Anna to the music of Saint-Saens in just a few minutes, improvising with her. At first, the Swan, in a weightless tutu trimmed with fluff, simply floated in serenity. But then Anna Pavlova added the tragedy of untimely death to the famous 130 seconds of dance, and the number turned into a masterpiece, and a “wound” shone on a snow-white tutu - a ruby brooch.
When Saint-Saens saw Pavlova dancing his "Swan", he managed to meet her in order to say: "Madame, thanks to you I realized that I wrote beautiful music!"
A small choreographic composition "The Dying Swan" became her signature number. She performed it, according to contemporaries, completely supernaturally. A spotlight beam descended onto the stage, huge or small, and followed the performer. A figurine dressed in swan down appeared with its back to the audience on pointe shoes.
She tossed about in intricate zigzags of death agony and did not descend from pointe shoes until the end of the number.
Her strength weakened, she departed from life and left it in an immortal pose, lyrically depicting doom, surrender to the winner - death.
Anna included The Dying Swan in all her programs, and no matter who the audience was - sophisticated balletomanes or ordinary people who saw the ballet for the first time - this number performed by her always shocked the audience. M. Fokin wrote that the "Swan" performed by Pavlova was proof that the dance can and should not only please the eye, it must penetrate the soul. Her dance, impressionistic in nature, was a plastic embodiment of music, figurative and poetic, Pavlova's dance was spiritual and sublime, and therefore it could not be repeated and copied. The secret of her success was not in the performance of the pas, but in the emotional fullness and spirituality of the dance. “The secret of my popularity is in the sincerity of my art,” Pavlova repeated more than once. And she was right.
Anna Pavlova idolized art, loved it with such a passion that only women of the "Silver Age" were probably able to relate to it. Not a single museum in the world was left without her attention. The Renaissance seemed to her the most beautiful era in the history of culture. Pavlova's favorite sculptors were Michelangelo and Donatello, and her favorite artists were Leonardo da Vinci, Botticelli and Sodoma. And in ballet, her tastes were formed under the influence of the pure lines of Renaissance art. All her partners had athletic figures similar to Michelangelo's "David".
Anna Pavlova and Algeranoff in `Russian Dance`
Anna Pavlova and Mikhail Mordkin
However, it would be wrong to think that the great Pavlova was exclusively an adherent of the St. Petersburg school of classical ballet and therefore rejected the new searches for Paris and Monte Carlo. No, some of her choreographic miniatures: "California poppy" with the image of red flying petals.
"Dragonfly", which the ballerina performed in a suit with wings in the style of art nouveau.
The "Assyrian dance", reminiscent of the revived bas-reliefs of Ancient Babylon, clearly belonged to the search for a new genre.
She even visited the school of Mary Wigman in Dresden, champion of the new movement in dance. Meanwhile, Pavlova liked to repeat that the beauty of the dance meant everything to her, and the ugliness meant nothing (and she categorically rejected everything that seemed ugly to her, and, in particular, some plastic elements of the new choreography). According to her judgment, beauty gave people happiness and brought them closer to perfection.
Anna was also interested in the avant-garde attractive dance of the talented American Isadora Duncan, she visited her studio more than once, but she herself continued tirelessly to promote the unfading art of Russian classical ballet wherever she could and where, at least a little bit, living conditions allowed! Anna Pavlova not only brought people her favorite art, she paved new paths along which classical ballet came into the life of different peoples. For tours, Pavlova chose countries such as India, Egypt, China, was in Japan, Burma, Malaya, Cuba, the Philippines, performed in front of audiences who had never seen ballet before her. The dancer set herself the goal of proving that classical ballet is not an art that is accessible only to a few experts.
Pavlova selflessly spoke in the schools of small American towns in a distant province, in front of Mexican shepherds, residents of mountain Indian villages. The Mexicans threw their sombreros at her feet as a sign of admiration, the Indians showered her with lotus flowers, the restrained Swedes silently escorted her huge carriage to the hotel, after a performance at the Royal Opera House, the Dutch loved her so much that they brought out a special variety of tulips and called it "Anna Pavlova".
A. Pavlova in New Zealand
With all her devotion to the art of ballet, Anna Pavlova, of course, remained a man of her era. Like any beautiful woman, she loved the world of fashion, willingly photographed and even posed in the furs of famous fashion houses in Berlin and Paris in the 1910s and 1920s. So, in February 1926 in Paris, she posed for the cover of the fashion magazine L'officiel in a pan-velvet coat trimmed with sables from the Drekol house.
In England, she advertised shoes for the H. & M. Rayne shoe company, which she wore, according to her, both on stage and in life. The “a la Pavlova” clothing style became so popular that it brought the Pavlova atlas, released in 1921, to the fashion world. It was Pavlova who introduced the fashion for Spanish-draped embroidered Manila shawls with tassels, which she knew how to wear so gracefully. The ballerina also loved hats. Her pickiness when shopping for outfits is legendary. Baron Dandre perfectly described the finickyness of the prima in choosing each new thing.
She came up with a special style of clothing for herself - multi-layered thin bedspreads with which she wrapped her body.
Anna Pavlova patronized Russian fashion houses in Paris: one of her personal couturiers was Pierre Pitoev. It is significant that the program of the performances of the Pavlova troupe in the Parisian "Theater of the Champs Elysees" in May 1928 was decorated with an advertisement for the fashion house of Prince Felix Yusupov - "IRFE".
Programs of Anna Pavlova's speeches:
1915
Pavlova's art is inseparable from the work of the remarkable theater artists of her time. In 1913, according to the sketches of Boris Anisfeld, fabulously beautiful costumes and scenery for Fokine's ballet "Preludes" to the music of Liszt were made. Konstantin Korovin created scenery for Pavlova for two performances. These were "Snowflakes" - a fragment from the first act of Tchaikovsky's "The Nutcracker", staged in her troupe as an independent one-act ballet - and "Don Quixote", the first act of which the ballerina danced during her 1925 American tour. The costumes for Minuet, The Dying Swan and The Musical Moment were designed by Leon Bakst, while Pavlova's Russian costume was designed by the talented Sergei Solomko, the favorite artist of Emperor Nicholas II. Mstislav Dobuzhinsky was the author of scenery and costumes for her Fairy Dolls. Subsequently, however, they were replaced by the design of Sergei Sudeikin. Contemporaries noted the stage similarity between Pavlova's Pavlova's Puppet Fairy and Diaghilev's La Boutique Fantasque (The Fancy Shop), an old Viennese ballet that performed on the stages of many European theaters in the early 20th century. The performance "Invitation to Dance" was designed by Nicholas Benois (son of Alexander Benois). In 1917, Anna Pavlova's repertoire included the Egyptian Ballet staged by Ivan Khlyustin to music by Verdi and Luigini. The design for it was created by Ivan Bilibin. Bilibin designed for the Pavlova troupe the production of "Russian Fairy Tale" based on the plot of "The Golden Cockerel" in the choreography of Lavrenty Novikov.
Somov K. Costume design for Columbine for Anna Pavlova in "Harlequinade" (b., watercolor, pencil); 1909
Leon (Samoilovitch) Bakst "Diana" (Costume Design for Anna Pavlova) 1910
"The Butterfly" (Costume Design for Anna Pavlova) 1913
J. Rous Paget (Costume Design for Anna Pavlova), 1926
In the costume of the Doll Fairy based on sketches by Lev Bakst. With Anna Pavlova, a new ideal of beauty came to the ballet scene: the puffy Venuses of the Petipa era were replaced by incorporeal Sylphs
Anna Pavlova's activities go far beyond her performing arts. The routes of her travels, which crossed all the continents of the earth, were the routes along which Russian choreographic culture entered the life of the peoples of different countries. In the person of Anna Pavlova, the Russian ballet school received worldwide fame and recognition.
And where did she want to live most of all, a migratory bird, an itinerant ballerina, who remained Russian to the end in everything? “Somewhere in Russia,” Pavlova invariably answered, but her desire remained an impossible dream.
Her English mansion Ivy House "the house covered with ivy" met guests with a pond with swans, among which was her favorite - the snow-white and proud handsome Jack (he, like a dog, followed his mistress through the garden, not being afraid to take their hands a delicacy).
With swans, the ballerina loved to be photographed. Her picture is known, where the photographer beat the actual resemblance - the bend of the swan's neck and the flexibility of the female ballet figure.
Pavlova, unlike other outstanding ballerinas, did not pass on her repertoire to her followers, and not because she did not want to do this or because she did not have students - in England she organized an entire ballet school and paid her pupils a lot of attention, and professional, and human. Her art, as Andrei Levinson, the best ballet critic of the emigration, accurately noted, "was born and died with her - in order to dance like Pavlova, you had to be Pavlova."
Her life in dance could be called a feat. So they named her later. But she did not perceive it as a feat at all. She simply lived, as if she was ready to dance forever with her troupe, who adored everything in her: style of clothing, hats, shoes, behavior, breakdowns, whims, gait, manner of speaking and laughing, and touchingly protecting her, like her beloved star child ... Child . She was him, a child fascinated by ballet since childhood. She was not going to die, death did not exist for her, because she managed to stop time in a graceful run across the stage, in a slow graceful step of her unique “Swan”, in a romantic whirling of a transparent Sylph, in a slow dance of gracefully crazy Giselle. Even leaving forever, on the gloomy morning of January 23, 1931, in the heat and feverish delirium of an unexpected, and, it seemed, trifling influenza, sharply complicated by fleeting pneumonia, Anna was preparing for her next appearance on the stage ... According to legend, her last quiet words in delirium were addressed to the dresser of the troupe gathered at the bedside: “Prepare my Swan costume!”
... Ballet, unlike literature, painting, music, art is fragile, momentary, existing only "here and now." The art of Anna Pavlova fascinated and captivated. And time had no power over him. It would seem that classical dance - pirouettes, batmans, plie, pas de bure - everything is well known, but the brilliant Pavlova could express a lively feeling, a whimsical change of mood, a play of fantasy with the help of ballet steps. And no matter how much they think about the secrets of her performance, the mysteries and mysteries of her art, they remain unsolved.
About Anna Pavlova, a documentary film "Without the right to take" was shot.
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Used materials:
Materials of the site www.ricolor.org (Pavlova Anna. The story of life and love)
Text of the article "Anna Pavlova", author S. Shevtsova
Materials of the magazine "Art" No. 18/2008.
Materials of the magazine "Women's Petersburg", 2002.
V. Dandre, book “Anna Pavlova. Life story"
