Pavlova, Anna Matveyevna

PAVLOVA, ANNA MATVEYEVNA

(1881–1931), the most famous of Russian ballerinas.

Anna Matveyevna Pavlova (patronymic later changed to Pavlovna) began her career in the St. Petersburg Imperial Theaters in 1898, which ended amidst her usual flurry of performing in 1930, only weeks before her death. Pavlova's rise to the rank of ballerina in the Imperial Theaters (by 1906) was rapid, though her artistic breakthrough came the following year, when she appeared in several short works choreographed by Michel Fokine. Two of these works (Les Sylphides and Le Pavillon d'Armide ) would join the roster of Serge Diagilev's Ballets Russes (as would their star performers, Pavlova and Vaslav Nijinsky). Both the ballets and dancers achieved unprecedented fame in that company's Paris season of 1909. Pavlova debuted another Fokine composition in St. Petersburg in 1908, a solo that would become her signature work and that remains strongly identified with her: The Swan, to music of Camille Saint-Saëns. Popularly known as the dying swan, this evanescent figure suited Pavlova's physical type and stage temperament. Pavlova excelled in ethereal, romantic roles such as

"Giselle," and would later create for herself a multitude of roles in which she portrayed butterflies, roses, snowflakes, dragonflies, poppies, leaves, and various other delicate creatures. After achieving international stardom with Diagilev's Ballets Russes, Pavlova struck out on her own, first negotiating an enviable contract with the Imperial Theaters, and subsequently abandoning the Russian stage to settle in London. In twenty years of touring the globe, Pavlova came to personify the peripatetic Russian ballerina, the touring star whose only home was the stage.

See also: ballet; nijinksy, vaslav fomich

bibliography

Money, Keith. (1982). Pavlova: Her Art and Life. New York: Knopf.

Tim Scholl