Pavlova's independent tours, which began in 1914, took her to remote parts of the world. These tours were managed by her husband, Victor Dandré. The repertoire of Anna Pavlova's company was in large part conventional. They danced excerpts or adaptations of Mariinsky successes such as Don Quixote, La Fille mal gardée (“The Girl Poorly Managed”), The Fairy Doll, or Giselle, of which she was an outstanding interpreter. The most famous numbers, however, were the succession of ephemeral solos, which were endowed by her with an inimitable enchantment: The Dragonfly, Californian Poppy, Gavotte, and Christmas are names that lingered in the thoughts of her audiences, together with her single choreographic endeavour, Autumn Leaves (1918).
Pavlova's enthusiasm for ethnic dances was reflected in her programs. Polish, Russian, and Mexican dances were performed. Her visits to India and Japan led her to a serious study of their dance techniques. She compiled these studies into Oriental Impressions, collaborating on the Indian scenes with Uday Shankar (Shankar, Uday), later to become one of the greatest performers of Indian dance, and in this way playing an important part in the renaissance of the dance in India.
Because she was the company's raison d'être, the source of its public appeal, and, therefore, its financial stability, Pavlova's burden was extreme. It was hardly surprising, therefore, that, by the end of her life, her technique was faltering, and she was relying increasingly on her unique qualities of personality.
Pavlova's personal life was undramatic apart from occasional professional headlines, as when, in 1911, she quarreled with Mordkin. For some time she kept secret her marriage to her manager, Victor Dandré, and there were no children; her maternal instincts spent themselves on her company and on a home for Russian refugee orphans, which she founded in Paris in 1920. She loved birds and animals, and her home in London, Ivy House, Hampstead, became famous for the ornamental lake with swans, beside which she was photographed and filmed, recalling her most famous solo, The Dying Swan, which the choreographer Michel Fokine (Fokine, Michel) had created for her in 1905. These film sequences are among the few extant of her and are included in a compilation called The Immortal Swan, together with some extracts from her solos filmed one afternoon in Hollywood, in 1924, by the actor Douglas Fairbanks (Fairbanks, Douglas), Sr.
Kathrine Sorley Walker
Additional Reading
Works discussing Pavlova's life and career include Victor Dandré, Anna Pavlova (1932, reprinted as Anna Pavlova in Art & Life, 1979), a tribute from her husband written immediately after her death; Theodore Stier, With Pavlova Round the World (1927); and Walford Hyden, Pavlova (1931), two accounts of touring with Pavlova written by her musical directors; Harcourt Algeranoff, My Years with Pavlova (1957), one of Pavlova's leading dancers writing of his time with her company; A.H. Franks (ed.), Pavlova (1956, reprinted 1981), a symposium contributed by people who knew Pavlova, compiled for the 25th anniversary of her death; Oleg Kerensky, Anna Pavlova (1973); André Olivéroff, Flight of the Swan (1932, reprinted 1979); John Lazzarini and Roberta Lazzarini, Pavlova: Repertoire of a Legend (1980), a photographic catalog of her career; and Keith Money, Anna Pavlova, Her Life and Art
Kschessinska, Mathilde
▪ Russian ballerina
Kschessinska also spelled Kshessinska, Russian in full Mathilda-maria Feliksovna Kshesinskaya
born Aug. 19 [Aug. 31, New Style], 1872, Ligovo, near Peterhof [now Petrodvorets], Russia
died Dec. 7, 1971, Paris, France
prima ballerina assoluta of the Imperial Russian Ballet (Mariinsky Ballet) and the first Russian dancer to master 32 consecutive fouettés en tournant (“whipped turns” done in place and on one leg), a feat previously performed only by Italian dancers and considered in that era the supreme achievement in dance technique.
Kschessinska studied under Christian Johansson and Enrico Cecchetti at the Imperial Ballet School in St. Petersburg, graduated in 1890, and joined the Mariinsky Theatre. In 1895 she became prima ballerina assoluta, a title awarded by the Imperial Ballet to only one other dancer, the Italian Pierina Legnani. Kschessinska interpreted major roles in Cinderella, La Sylphide, Esmeralda, The Nutcracker, and The Sleeping Beauty. In 1911 she danced in London with Vaslav Nijinsky in Swan Lake for Sergey Diaghilev's Ballets Russes.
Kschessinska was a close friend of both Nicholas II, who was executed in 1918, and his cousin the grand duke André, whom she married in 1921. She left Russia in 1920 and, for 30 years, taught in Paris; her pupils included Tatiana Riabouchinska and Margot Fonteyn. Her autobiography is Souvenirs de la Kschessinska (1960; Dancing in Petersburg: The Memoirs of Kschessinska).
Mariinsky Ballet
▪ Russian ballet company
also spelled Maryinsky , Russian Mariinsky Balet , formerly (1935–91) Kirov Ballet
prominent Russian ballet company, part of the Mariinsky Theatre of Opera and Ballet in St. Petersburg. Its traditions, deriving from its predecessor, the Imperial Russian Ballet, are based on the work of such leading 19th-century choreographers as Jules Perrot, Arthur Saint-Léon, and Marius Petipa and such dancers as Marie Taglioni, Olga Preobrajenska, Mathilde Kschessinskaya, Anna Pavlova, Vaslav Nijinsky, Tamara Karsavina, Michel Fokine, George Balanchine, and Maria Danilova.
The company began as a dancing academy founded in St. Petersburg in 1738. Its early performances were before the royal court, and, after 1780, in the Petrovsky (now Bolshoi) Theatre. The Imperial Russian Ballet was established as a professional company and became the centre of Russian ballet. In the late 19th century the company moved to the Mariinsky Theatre, where it became the resident ballet company, acquiring the Mariinsky name. With the October Revolution of 1917, the company lost 40 percent of its personnel but was able to maintain its repertoire and its technical proficiency under the teacher Agrippina Vaganova (Vaganova, Agrippina) and artistic director Konstantin Sergeyev (Sergeyev, Konstantin Mikhailovich). During the Soviet period the theatre was renamed the S.M. Kirov State Academic Theatre of Opera and Ballet, and the company became known as the Kirov Ballet. New works on heroic themes were produced, as well as such experimental works as Igor Belsky's The Coast of Hope (1959). After 1961 the company toured western Europe, the United States, and Canada. With the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, the theatre and company reclaimed their Mariinsky name.
Russian chant
▪ music
monophonic, or unison, chant of the liturgy of the Russian Orthodox church. Musical manuscripts from the 11th to the 13th century suggest that, at first, chanting in Russia almost certainly followed Byzantine melodies, which were adapted to the accentual patterns of the Old Church Slavonic language. Russian manuscripts of this period are the only surviving sources of a highly ornate type of Byzantine chant called kontakion and contain a complex Byzantine musical notation that by then had disappeared in Byzantium. Russian sources may thus be crucial documents for the reconstruction of one branch of Byzantine music and notation.
In the 14th century, musical notation in Russian manuscripts began to change its meaning and form. Scholars usually presume—but this has not been fully proved—that native Russian elements began to enter Russian church music at this time. The first lists of kryuki (“hooks”), or signs, used as musical notation in Russia, were compiled in the late 15th century. The lists show that by then most technical terms were Russian and that Greek terms had begun to disappear. By the 16th century, Russian chant apparently had lost its links with its Byzantine prototypes, and melodies became different in their outlines. An indigenous polyphonic repertoire known as troyestrochnoye peniye (“three-line singing”) arose about this time. It consisted of a traditional chant in the middle voice, accompanied by a newly composed descant and bass. By Western standards, these harmonizations are very dissonant.