Anna Pavlova

Russian dancer

• Born: February 12, 1881
• Birthplace: St. Petersburg, Russia
• Died: January 23, 1931
• Place of death: The Hague, the Netherlands

Pavlova was widely regarded as the greatest embodiment of ballet in her lifetime, and she became a symbol of the best the ballet has known after her death. She spread knowledge of and interest in ballet through her worldwide tours.

Early Life

Anna Pavlova (pav-LOH-vah) was born to impoverished parents, and her father died when she was only two. Her mother sent her to live in the country with her grandmother. In Ligovo, she led a simple life with a grandmother who was totally devoted to caring for her. Her favorite amusement was seeking flowers in the woods. She developed a deep love of nature and of this landscape in particular. When she was eight years old, her mother took her to see the ballet at the Maryinsky Theater. The performance of La Belle au Bois Dormant (Sleeping Beauty) captured her imagination, and she told her mother that she wanted to become a ballerina and dance that role. At Anna’s insistence, her mother applied to the Imperial Theater School, but she was told they would take no children under ten. After waiting for two years, they applied again. She passed the examination and entered the school in 1891.

At the school, her teachers were Pavel Gerdt and Christian Johannsen, a former pupil and dancer of the Danish master Auguste Bournonville. She also studied with E. P. Sokolova, a former prima ballerina of the Maryinsky, and Enrico Cecchetti, the great Italian teacher. The Imperial Theater School gave instruction in general education and religion as well as dance. The full program took seven years to complete. In addition to ballet, the students learned historical and national dances and practiced long hours on their own. Pavlova was graduated and made her debut at the Maryinsky on June 1, 1899. She immediately moved into small parts rather than the corps de ballet and moved steadily through the ranks of the company from second soloist (1902) to first soloist (1903), ballerina (1905), and prima (1906). Before becoming a ballerina, she spent more time studying with Cecchetti to perfect her technique. By that time, she had appeared in all the major ballerina roles and had attracted a loyal following.

Life’s Work

Two of the great themes of Pavlova’s life became apparent very early in her career. In 1907, she created the title role in The Dying Swan, choreographed by Michel Fokine, and in 1908, she began to tour abroad. Throughout her life, though she performed with companies and organized and led her own, she was best known for her solo and duet roles, in which her individual artistry as a performer shone clearly. Her tours throughout the world helped to make ballet universal and an international language of art.

In her early years as prima ballerina with the Maryinsky company, she created her major solo roles. In 1907, she premiered Fokine’s Pavillon d’Armide, in 1908, Egyptian Nights, and also in 1908, Fokine’s second version of Chopiniana. After she began to tour outside Russia in 1908, she remained a member of the Maryinsky company but spent continually less time there. Eventually, she would return only after long tours and would study again with her teachers to refresh her technique. Her performances at the Maryinsky ended when she officially left the company in 1913.

Her first foreign tour took her to Scandinavia, Leipzig, Prague, and Vienna. She was immediately successful and acclaimed wherever she performed. In Stockholm, young men unharnessed the horses from her carriage and led it back to her hotel themselves a tribute paid to only a few nineteenth century ballerinas and an exuberant beginning to her international career. In 1909, she performed with Sergei Diaghilev’s company, the Ballets Russes, in Paris. She made her debut in Berlin, in 1909, and in New York and London, in 1910, all with the Ballets Russes. Her last appearance with Diaghilev’s company was in London, in 1911. London was to be her home; in 1912, she and her husband, Victor Dandré, purchased Ivy House on Hampstead Hill. She had a particular love for the gardens and pond at the home.

Pavlova formed her own company in 1914, a more difficult path to choose than to stay within the Maryinsky or to continue with Diaghilev. Yet, she assembled a company and led it on world tours as though given a mission to take ballet and her own dancing presence to every country on the earth. Her company repertoire was drawn from the classics, sometimes in abbreviated versions. The choreography was by Jean Coralli, Marius Petipa, and Lev Ivanov. The repertoire also included the dances by Fokine in which she created her great roles. Newer work was contributed by Uday Shankar, among others. Her attention to Shankar, an Indian artist studying painting in London, led to their performances together of dances inspired by classical Indian dance. Pavlova encouraged Shankar to leave ballet and develop and renew the Indian art form. As Shankar was greatly responsible for the renaissance of classical dance in India, Pavlova can be credited with urging him to do so.

Pavlova’s repertoire also included works that she herself choreographed. Among the most popular was Autumn Leaves (1919), set to music by Frédéric Chopin, the only full-company ballet she choreographed. Similar to her other works, it developed from an intense appreciation of nature. All of her work was inspired by nature, and her artistic gift was to appear actually to become the flower, dragonfly, swan, or human emotion that she portrayed. To her audience, she seemed to create a miracle in each performance, transcending her own being and transporting the members of the audience from their own time and place as well. She believed that expressing beauty so that the audience might experience it in an immediate way was the goal of her art and also the source of hope for humanity.

As her performances featured duets and solos, Pavlova had a series of male partners who were famous dancers in their own right. The first was Mikhail Mordkin, who partnered her at the Maryinsky; Laurent Novikov became her partner in 1911 and Pierre Vladimirov in 1927. Although her first set of dancers were mostly Russian, once she fully organized her company they were drawn mainly from England and other European countries. The company members were influential in spreading Pavlova’s philosophy and style and the Cecchetti-influenced technique. Many European dancers left the company to remain as teachers and performers in the United States, and many Americans who returned home after being in her company gained fame on their return. They became important not only in ballet but also in theatrical and popular dance.

Pavlova’s touring was tireless and covered great distances on the globe at a time when the only means of travel was ocean liner. She and her company spent the period of World War I in South America, where they had been conducting an extensive series of performances when the war broke out. Her company danced not only in the great capitals of Europe but also in provincial towns. Their travels also took them to then-exotic places such as Egypt and Australia.

Pavlova made one film and a series of test shots in Hollywood. In 1915, she portrayed Fenella in The Dumb Girl of Portici. The test shots, filmed in 1924, included excerpts from some of her most popular dances: Christmas, The Dying Swan, Oriental Dance, Rose Mourante, Fairy Doll, The Californian Poppy, and Columbine. These were arranged for a film, The Immortal Swan , in 1956, the twenty-fifth anniversary of her death.

This pioneer of world dance suffered somewhat from the fluctuations of fashion. She kept to her classical repertoire throughout the time that Diaghilev’s innovations became popular. Thus, there was little enthusiasm among the patrons of the high culture in London for her production of Giselle , for example, in the late 1910’s and early 1920’s. At that time, most of the classics of Russian ballet, the works of Petipa, were out of favor. After her death, the importance of the classics was restored as they took their places in repertoires alongside modern additions. Pavlova’s faith in the classics did not come from a lack of curiosity or a limited imagination; rather, she believed that these ballets and her own dances were the best way to touch the hearts of the broadest range of people. To bring ballet to the world did not mean to her to limit it to an aesthetic elite. In 1915, she considered experimenting with dance without music but decided it would be too strange to attract “the masses.” She wanted to reach the people and was in turn embraced by them. She truly believed that she could provide joy for the people of the world and through dance give them relief from the sorrows of life.

Her wide appeal affected many future dancers and dance lovers. Sir Frederick Ashton, who was to become one of the great twentieth century ballet choreographers, saw her dance when he was a young man in Lima, Peru; her performances helped lead him to a life in ballet. He always considered himself a follower of the tradition of the great Russian choreographers Fokine and Petipa, but with a sense of theater that might be traced to Pavlova. He remembered her exceptionally expressive hands and feet and the sensitivity and unique “plasticity” of her movement. Although questions have been raised about the purity of her technique was hers the greatest or was it merely equally great as that of other ballerinas? Ashton and other exemplars of ballet, such as Margot Fonteyn, have maintained that her technique was fine but so surpassed by her magical presence that it cannot be considered separately. Hers was a total performance. Ashton claimed that she was the “greatest theatrical genius” that he had ever seen and that she was able to create more beauty and emotion from her slight dances than could be achieved in full-scale ballets.

Pavlova’s death came tragically early, in 1931, after she became ill while on tour in the Netherlands. She continued with her rehearsal preparations despite her illness. One of her company members who was with her at the time recalled that after she was forced to bed by a high fever, doctors pierced her back to drain fluid from her lungs; she died soon after this treatment. It is said that her last words were a request for her swan costume. At her funeral in London near Ivy House, she was mourned by many who had never known her but had believed in the beautiful legend she had become.

Significance

Pavlova became the image and spirit of ballet during her lifetime. Her name continues to be synonymous with greatness not only as a dancer but also as an artist who gave her whole life to her art. There was nothing in her life that did not contribute in some way to her perfection of her dancing or to the furthering of the art. She traveled at least three hundred thousand miles at a time when travel was difficult. While acknowledged as the world’s greatest dancer, she took her performances to remote places and was said never to find them anything less than stimulating and a source of joy. She called herself “a sower.” Through her work and her travels, she not only allowed vast numbers of people to share the pleasure of her performances but also spread the knowledge and love of ballet. She was physically beautiful but did not stop at portraying prettiness; according to Ashton, her performances could make the audience uncomfortable because of her powerful presence and uncompromising presentation of emotional truth. She stirred her audiences more than she entertained them. Even in choreography that would not have been meaningful without her performing it, she created profound illustrations of life. No one could be indifferent to her. As a woman leading her own company around the world with her husband assisting, she presented a strong image of courage and confidence. It is to her credit, through her own performances and the legend she created, that ballet is performed and applauded on every continent.

Bibliography

Algeranoff, Harcourt. My Years with Pavlova. London: William Heinemann, 1957. A narrative by a company member of Pavlova’s work with her companies on tour.

Beaumont, Cyril W. Anna Pavlova. London: C. W. Beaumont, 1938. A brief biography and appreciation of Pavlova by a ballet lover who admired her greatly and promoted her legend after her death.

Dandré, Victor. Anna Pavlova in Art and Life. London: Cassell, 1932. A detailed biography by Pavlova’s husband. In this book, Dandré frequently tries to correct what he believes to have been mistaken ideas about Pavlova’s life.

Fonteyn, Margot. Pavlova: Portrait of a Dancer. New York: Viking, 1984. A remarkable collection of photographs from all stages of Pavlova’s life accompanies a text drawn greatly from Pavlova’s interviews and letters. The commentary by Dame Margot Fonteyn is helpful but never intrusive and serves to illustrate the continued admiration for Pavlova in the ballet world.

Lazzarini, John, and Roberta Lazzarini. Pavlova: Repertoire of a Legend. New York: Schirmer Books, 1980. A large-format picture book that focuses on photographic studies from Pavlova’s repertory. The authors are the curators of the Pavlova Society and offer reliable discussion of the works.

Mercurio, Malana. “Anna Pavlova: Ballerina Absoluta.” The World and I, November, 2006. A brief profile of Pavlova with information on her life and career.