Anna Pavlova Research Articles

Forgotten Encounters: The Legacy of Sculptresses and Female Muses

Sculpture as a medium is inherently connected to legacy making. In producing three- dimensional monuments designed to withstand the test of time, women artists provided evidence of the lasting quality and permanence of their creative acts. This article examines the actress, sculptress and novelist Anne Damer’s sculpture of the famous actress turned Countess Eliza Farren (c. 1788), paying particular attention to the relationship between sculpture as a static art form that captures tactile embodied presence and the ephemerality of performance. Farren’s involvement in Damer’s staging of the private theatricals at Richmond House (Farren directed and Damer starred) suggests that their collaborative relationship engendered aesthetic acts across media – performances that are now lost but remain in traces across a variety of material. Similarly, in the mid nineteenth century the American artist Harriet Hosmer’s spectacular sculptures of female figures were inspired in part by her intimate relationship with the famous actress Charlotte Cushman. Cushman’s dynamic performances of Lady Macbeth parallel Hosmer’s powerful controversial sculpture of Zenobia as a warrior Queen (1859). Looking ahead to the early twentieth century, I propose that Malvina Hoffman’s uncanny portrait busts of the ballet dancer Anna Pavlova (particularly her “Head of Pavlova” made of wax, 1924), similarly recreate a unique dynamic between the female artist and the intangible performances of her female muse. Drawing connections between Damer, Hosmer, and Hoffman, across time and media, allows us to re-imagine the relationship between artistic forms, materials, and aesthetic practices. Women’s artistic and theatrical legacies, I suggest, are not found only in tangible sources, but also by recuperating networks, connections, and collaborations through interdisciplinary practices. In doing so we create new legacies that chart the extraordinary accomplishments of women of the past.

Connections and Missed Connections: Russian Emigrés Bring Ballet to An American City (Chicago, 1924)

At the turn of the twentieth century, many Russian dancers cast aside careers in the highly regarded Imperial Ballet for unknown futures in the West. Emigrating for a variety of personal and artistic reasons, some decided to remain abroad during the revolution and after the Tsar’s assassination. This microhistory explores one moment in the Russian exile movement when former Imperial Ballet dancers Adolph Bolm, Anna Pavlova, and Tamara Karsavina connected, or just missed connecting, in 1924 Chicago. Their reasons for being there diverged but all believed they had a mission to spread the gifts of Russian ballet.

THE IMAGE OF A RUSSIAN BALLERINA IN GERMAN PORCELAIN

The article analyses the characteristics of the Russian ballerina image on the products of German small porcelain sculpture. The main stylistic and artistic sources of images of dancers and ballet dancers are considered. The cultural context of small sculpture art dedicated to ballet is given. Performances and ballet images are compared with porcelain items produced on their basis. The main similarities and differences are considered. The reasons for these differences are analysed. The article considers the influence of the Russian Seasons on German porcelain in the context of European culture as well as a particular manifestation of it. Also, the works of P.Scheurich, H.Meisel and H.Lederer are taken into account. In the case of Scheurich, the main stages of creativity associated with images inspired by ballet are highlighted. In the case of Meisel and Lederer, the key series related to dance are studied. The artistic features of small porcelain sculpture series, including Carnival, and the series created by Meisel and Lederer in collaboration with Anna Pavlova are analysed. While the works of Scheurich bore the imprint of the rocaille tendencies characteristic of German porcelain, the work of two other artists, Meisel and Lederer, embodied the influences of modernity. The main trends in the design of porcelain figurines are shown: the addition of decorative elements and colours to the original is one of them, monochromaticism and an emphasis on movement is the other. The main stylistic variations within the framework of individual artists’ work are traced. The primary features of the material of small porcelain sculpture and the artistic limitations imposed by them are analysed. The key methods of artistic adaptation of costumes and poses to the material, porcelain, and the tastes of the era are considered. The influence of the Commedia dell'Arte on the Russian ballets and on Scheurich’s work, and works created by Anna Pavlova on Meisel and Lederer’s work is demonstrated. The main visual features of the masters’ most famous products are considered. The interpretation of the key motifs found on the products of German small porcelain sculpture of the first half of the 20th century is presented. Thus, a multilateral assessment is given to the work of Scheurich, Meisel and Lederer.

ART AND SCULPTURE PATTERNS IN CREATING STAGE IMAGES BY ANNA PAVLOVA

This article is a comprehensive analysis of the development of Anna Pavlova’s creative art in a manner which enables translation of her physical stage roles into production of models and sculptures. The author considers formation and evolution of her creative style: individual performer’s artistic style, choreography manner and type or direction in Russian ballet schools, reflecting the system of thought of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Pavlova’s stage roles, not previously reflected in the literature, have been analyzed, a comprehensive scientific assessment and systematic review of choreographic images have been given in relation to figurative interpretation of the main character of the performance, wherein she acted as the artist-dancer-creator

Imported Sophistication: The Ballets Russes Tours of the 1930s–50s and Toronto's Quest for Cultural Significance

Imported Sophistication: The Ballets Russes Tours of the 1930s–50s and Toronto's Quest for Cultural Significance

Diaghilev's Ballets Russes in the American Midwest

Diaghilev's Ballets Russes in the American Midwest

A “Brilliant Talk” and a “Stirring Appeal”: How Women of Grand Rapids, Michigan, Built an Audience for the Ballets Russes in 1917

A “Brilliant Talk” and a “Stirring Appeal”: How Women of Grand Rapids, Michigan, Built an Audience for the Ballets Russes in 1917

“It Must Be Preserved”: Adolph Bolm's Revival of Le Coq d'Or

“It Must Be Preserved”: Adolph Bolm's Revival of <i>Le Coq d'Or</i>

Guest Editor's Introduction: The Ballets Russes in North America

Guest Editor's Introduction: The Ballets Russes in North America

Touring the Screen: Cinematic Resonances of Diaghilev's Ballets Russes

Touring the Screen: Cinematic Resonances of Diaghilev's Ballets Russes

THE SHOCK OF THE RISKY(QUÉ) FEMALE: FEMININITY AND THE TRAUMA OF THE GREAT WAR ERA IN THE DANCING OF MAUD ALLAN AND ANNA PAVLOVA

What role did the figure of the dancing female play in negotiating cultural anxieties in the Great War era? I explore this question by looking at the female performer Maud Allan who was famous for her danced interpretations of Salomé in pre-War London and cause of a sensational libel suit in 1918 bring together deviant female sexuality and wartime espionage. I juxtapose Allan with ballerina Anna Pavlova, a contemporary, and role model par excellence for proper femininity. These two examples offer a rich comparison from which to discuss how dancing and femininity was the grounds for inciting and palliating the profound cultural trauma of the Great War era. KeywordsDance. Femininity. Cultural Trauma. Great War Era.

Вербальная музыка как опыт вхождения в звуковое пространство ребёнка: теория и практика

The article researches the pedagogical potential of verbal music actualized in music classes. The authors focus their attention on the history of the question, suggesting to supplement the classification presented by S.P. Scher with such a type of interaction between words and music as words spoken during music (melo-recitation). While examining verbal music in the context of the art of music, the authors concentrate on Camille Saint-Saens’ composition “The Swan” from the suite “The Carnival of Animals,” suggesting not only variants of verbalization of the instrumental music itself by the example of Lev Druskin’s poem “The Swan Struggles with Human Anguish…”, Dmitri Bykov’s “The Swan and Archpriest Andrei Tkachev’s prose, but also the an attempt of verbalizing the plastic intonating of Saint-Saens’ piece realized in the work of Anna Pavlova, Galina Ulanova and Maya Plisetskaya. In addition, the authors bring into scholarly use the verbalization of music presented in Evgeny Vodolazkin’s novel “Brisbane.” Proposing a set of assignments aimed at the actualization of verbal music as a unique opportunity of re-expressing musical content into the spoken word presenting itself as a unit of speech of the studying youth, the authors turn to Russian scholarly literature, as well as to that of other countries. According to the authors, the inclusion of the phenomenon of verbal music into lessons provides a maximal problematization of the studied material, helps maintain the students’ interest in their music studies by stimulating children’s creativity, and also sets up the resultative qualities of communication of all the participants of the pedagogical process, enabling the musicians in their realization of the immutability of the following fact: music can be and must be talked about!

India and the Translocal Modern Dance Scene, 1890s–1950s

At the end of the nineteenth century and during the first half of the twentieth, lead dancers from different countries became famous and toured internationally. These dancers—and the companies they created—transformed various dance forms into performances fit for the larger world of art music, ballet, and opera circuits. They adapted ballet to the variety-show formats and its audiences. Drawing on shared philosophical ideas—such as those manifest in the works of the Transcendentalists or in the writings of Nietzsche and Wagner—and from movement techniques, such as ballet codes, the Delsarte method, and, later on, Eurythmics (in fashion at the time), these lead dancers created new dance formats, choreographies, and styles, from which many of today’s classical, folk, and ballet schools emerged. In this essay, I look at how Rabindranath Tagore, Isadora Duncan, Anna Pavlova, Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn, Uday Shankar, Leila Roy Sokhey and Rumini Devi Arundale contributed to this translocal dance scene. Indian dance and spirituality, as well as famous Indian dancers, were an integral part of what at the time was known as the international modern dance scene. This transnational scene eventually coalesced into several separate schools, including what today is known as classical and modern Indian dance styles.

Dance Overview of the Australian Performing Arts Collection

The Dance Collection at Arts Centre Melbourne traces the history of dance in Australia from the late nineteenth century to today. The collection encompasses the work of many of Australia's major dance companies and individual performers whilst spanning a range of genres, from contemporary dance and ballet, to theatrical, modern, folk and social dance styles. The Dance Collection is part of the broader Australian Performing Arts Collection, which covers the five key areas of circus, dance, opera, music and theatre. In my overview of Arts Centre Melbourne's (ACM) Dance Collection, I will outline how the collection has grown and highlight the strengths and weaknesses associated with different methods of collecting. I will also identify major gaps in the archive and how we aim to fill these gaps and create a well-balanced and dynamic view of Australian dance history. Material relating to international touring artists and companies including Lola Montez, Adeline Genée, Anna Pavlova and the Ballet Russes de Monte Carlo provide an understanding of how early trends in dance performance have influenced our own traditions. Scrapbooks, photographs and items of costume provide glimpses into performances of some of the world's most famous dance performers and productions. As many of these scrapbooks were compiled by enthusiastic and appreciative audience members, they also record the emerging audience for dance, which placed Australia firmly on the touring schedule of many international performers in the early decades of the 20th century. The personal stories and early ambitions that led to the formation of our national companies are captured in collections relating to the history of the Borovansky Ballet, Ballet Guild, Bodenwieser Ballet, and the National Theatre Ballet. Costume and design are a predominant strength of these collections. Through them, we discover and appreciate the colour, texture and creative industry behind pivotal works that were among the first to explore Australian narratives through dance. These collections also tell stories of migration and reveal the diverse cultural roots that have helped shape the training of Australian dancers, choreographers and designers in both classical and contemporary dance styles. The development of an Australian repertoire and the role this has played in the growth of our dance culture is particularly well documented in collections assembled collaboratively with companies such as The Australian Ballet, Sydney Dance Company, and Chunky Move. These companies are at the forefront of dance in Australia and as they evolve and mature under respective artistic directors, we work closely with them to capture each era and the body of work that best illustrates their output through costumes, designs, photographs, programmes, posters and flyers. The stories that link these large, professional companies to a thriving local, contemporary dance community of small to medium professional artists here in Melbourne will also be told. In order to develop a well-balanced and dynamic view of Australian dance history, we are building the archive through meaningful collecting relationships with contemporary choreographers, dancers, designers, costume makers and audiences. I will conclude my overview with a discussion of the challenges of active collecting with limited physical storage and digital space and the difficulties we face when making this archive accessible through exhibitions and online in a dynamic, immersive and theatrical way.

Anna Pavlova, Live in Manila!: The Globalization of Ballet and its Localization in the Philippines

Anna Pavlova was the first ballerina to tour the world, effectively globalizing ballet and transforming it from a European/Russian art form into a universal one. The places that she performed in, exotic, war-torn or on the brink of a civil revolt, with either unbearably hot or achingly cold climates, all received her differently, according to the local culture, affecting the ballerina as much as she had an effect on the people who came to see her dance. In most places, such as Cuba, Argentina, the US, Australia, and the Philippines, Pavlova had inspired the localization of ballet in their respective cultures, where appropriation had turned into tradition. This paper looks at how Anna Pavlova accomplished the globalization of ballet as a universal art form, and how it had successfully embedded itself as a local tradition in several countries, specifically in the Philippines, where there exist three professional ballet companies that are still currently active. This paper analyzes Pavlova’s contribution using the concepts of globalization, culture contact, and localization or indigenization.

Balanchine and Kirstein's American Enterprise by James Steichen

Reviewed by: Balanchine and Kirstein's American Enterprise by James Steichen Chantal Frankenbach Balanchine and Kirstein's American Enterprise. James Steichen. New York: Oxford University Press, 2019. Pp. 302. $35.00 (cloth). In 1915, less than twenty years before Russian choreographer George Balanchine arrived in the US, literary critic Van Wyck Brooks observed that antithetical "twin values" of "highbrow" and "lowbrow" still divided every aspect of American life. Between the two brows, Brooks concluded, there was "no genial middle ground."1 For ballet in early twentieth-century America, this seemed particularly true. Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova and the touring offshoots of Sergei Diaghilev's Paris-based Ballets Russes had convinced many Americans that, in contrast to the popular dancing on American stages, classical dance came from afar and on high. Yet a growing number of dance scholars are revealing the crevices in this dichotomy.2 Musicologist and dance historian James Steichen joins them with a richly researched and gracefully written book on the tangled origins of the New York City Ballet (NYCB) and its associated School of American Ballet. Steichen illuminates the collision of aesthetic and economic concerns driving Balanchine and his sponsor–benefactor Lincoln Kirstein in the first seven years (1933–40) of their now-fabled quest to create an American ballet institution. This period of "missteps, overlooked achievements, and unsung heroes," Steichen argues, is no less important to understanding American theater dance than the mature Balanchine ballets it eventually spawned (Balanchine and Kirstein's American Enterprise, 11). Steichen's account of these two remarkably persistent modernists stands to correct the received history that has "papered over" their endeavor's inauspicious origins (8). Scholars and students of American culture will find here a narrative that weaves dance history into theater, music, and film from a remarkable trove of materials, reminding us just how much positivist work still awaits historians of American dance. Titling Balanchine and Kirstein's project an "enterprise" fittingly acknowledges the crossed purposes in their effort to institutionalize ballet in America. An enterprise, after all, suggests something sleek, commercial, market-driven, and risky—something antithetical to any elite aesthetic sensibilities these self-proclaimed modernists might have coveted. Noting the absence of this foundational conflict in the legend and lore of the NYCB's founding, Steichen rejects the temptation of "triumphant teleology" and "retrospective coherence" in exchange for a more warts-and-all look at the initial American Ballet's first staggers and stumbles (11, 7). Drawing extensively from the popular press and numerous archives, Steichen makes good storytelling of Kirstein's colorful diaries and correspondence. A thorough literature review in the introduction; images of rehearsals, programs, and promotional materials; and meticulously sourced notes all add up to a volume of scholarly precision that deliberately avoids any deep dive into cultural analysis.3 The pragmatic year-by-year chapter titles are perhaps a sign of missed opportunities to weave more thematic reflections into the tale. Beginning and ending with thoughts on Serenade's place in the development of the symphonic ballet (unquestionably a signature achievement of Balanchine's), chapter three, for instance, might have developed this topic just enough to warrant a title more pledged to its purpose than "1934–1935." Yet the chronological arc and orderly delivery of Steichen's material has clear merits. Chapter one weaves the early biographies of Balanchine and Kirstein into the network of associates (Romola Nijinsky, Virgil Thomson, Chick Austin, Edward Warburg) who helped to bring Balanchine first to Hartford and then to New York City, where their "exhilarating and haphazard journey" of failures and contradictions began (4). As we see in Kirstein's diaries and correspondence—like the newsy October 1933 letter to his mother reporting that his "ballet people" were about to arrive in New York—his machinations with well-to-do Americans set the stage for the enterprise's [End Page 620] start (18). Chapter two traces the first two performances of the American Ballet: one ill-fated exhibition at the White Plains estate of patron Edward Warburg, and a more successful showing at the Avery Memorial Theater in Hartford. The ballets produced for these debuts (Mozartiana, Errante, Dreams, Transcendence, Serenade, and the football-themed Alma Mater) reveal the...

Dancing in Place

Reviewed by: Dancing in Place Jay Rogoff (bio) Dancing in Place Although the dance world shut down during the COVID-19 pandemic, my last article's pronouncement that dancers had become wallflowers has proven short-sighted. On the contrary, these extraordinary athletes have worked vigorously while sheltering in place, keeping fit in small apartments, taking company class via Zoom, rallying comrades to help the sick and preserve dancers' careers and companies' lives, and supporting the struggle for social justice. Toward these goals, dancers and choreographers have created and posted new work designed for video, an entirely different swan from live choreography. Next issue's article will discuss some of the new political choreography just beginning to emerge on video in response to the murders of George Floyd and others; here I'll examine new dance videos that imaginatively defy the pandemic by virtually reassembling performers restricted to quarters into a community. American Ballet Theatre principal Misty Copeland and former ABT dancer Joseph Phillips convened 32 ballerinas, sheltering all over the world, for the six-minute Swans for Relief, a fundraiser for dancers thrown out of work or off health insurance while almost every dance company on the planet suspended operations. Cellist Wade Davis plays, twice, "The Swan," from Saint-Säens's Carnival of the Animals, as ballerina after ballerina dances The Dying Swan, Mikhail Fokine's 1905 solo for Anna Pavlova. Except for two or three recorded in a studio, each woman dances in decidedly non-theatrical surroundings—sparse apartments, living rooms hung with family mementos, backyards—employing balletic vocabulary whose artifice, paradoxically, projects feelings that mirror the rhythms of life. Copeland begins the number solidly in a furnished living room. The camera starts on her feet but then, inexcusably, travels up her body, depriving us of key information and pleasure. We never even see the feet of the Paris Opera Ballet's Hannah O'Neill or the Royal's Francesca Hayward; as if aware of this gaffe, the video cuts to Royal Danish ballerina Ida Praetorius, shot from floor level to display her entire regal form. (Editing is uncredited; the dancers were recorded by themselves or family members.) Although we never stay with any ballerina longer than a couple of measures, the shifting angles offer continual fascination. After a three-quarter angle shot of Ballet Philippines' Denise Parunga on a concrete terrace, folding herself deeply to the ground, wing-arms swept behind her, we dissolve to Norwegian National Ballet's Whitney Jensen, also deeply folded, but in profile in a white studio. She brings those arms forward, bends backward, then dissolves into ABT's Skylar Brandt, framed by a rustic arched building entrance. Some unusual angles work handsomely: New York City Ballet's Sara Mearns, for example, shown from the back in a bare city apartment, stretches to her full height, then flutters arms whose muscles evoke wings. Shelter, a five-minute video work by Alexander and Valentina Reneff-Olson, uses a similar strategy—many soloists in succession montaged [End Page 619]into a complete dance—to showcase not classic but new choreography by Danielle Rowe and Garen Scribner, collaborating with San Francisco Ballet principal Joseph Walsh. We again see dancers performing alone in their homes, but unlike Swans for Relief, Shelterexpresses their urgency, anxiety, and anomie while sheltering in place, the balletic imagination hemmed in by walls. More than half of Shelter's 26 performers are men, and many are modern dancers. As with Swans, the dancers or their families videoed their performances. Unlike Swans, however, the choreography, while linear, keeps returning to its performers at different stages of the dance, creating a recursive continuity. Walsh appears several times, establishing a template for the choreography. He begins the work by walking away from the camera, hunched slightly (it's not a dancer's walk), shirtless, in track slacks, down a narrow hallway in his home. Piano music begins, Beethoven sonata excerpts, played by Thomas Lauderdale and Jacob Van. Walsh continues walking away, but now, in a stunning spatial contrast, at center stage of San Francisco's empty War Memorial Opera House, where his company performs. He moves to his left, extends his left arm, and we...

The ABC of ESG

Environmental, social and governance investing is now mainstream – but measuring the performance of ‘green’ products and their asset managers is complex. By Anna Pavlova

A Directory of Diaghilev Dancers

Serge Diaghilev's Ballets Russes came to an end with his death in 1929, but it has since been an endless source of fascination and inspiration for dancers, dance historians and fans. It would seem that every aspect of the Ballets Russes has been exhaustively explored and documented – from the art, the music and the choreography, to the personalities who created them. The names of Anna Pavlova, Tamara Karsavina and Vaslav Nijinsky are legendary, and many others (Michel Fokine, George Balanchine, Ninette De Valois, Marie Rambert) went on to influence and define the art of ballet for much of the 20th century. But what of the hundreds of dancers who actually gave life and form to the Ballets Russes? Who were they? Where did they come from? How long did they spend with the company? The following listing of more than 400 performers is a comprehensive record of the dancing artists who performed with Diaghilev's Ballets Russes.

Mapping Movement on the Move: Dance Touring and Digital Methods

A better understanding of the transnational networks of dance touring is critical to placing dance within larger theatrical and cultural systems. This essay demonstrates how digital research methods can work in tandem with more traditional scholarly methods to manage the scale and complexity of data truly necessary to account for what we call “movement on the move.” Drawing on the authors’ research on dance touring—namely, South American tours by Anna Pavlova’s company during World War I and the American Ballet Caravan during World War II—the essay focuses on the database and the map as tools that expand the capacity to trace “dynamic spatial histories of movement.” It argues that larger questions of mobility, transportation, infrastructure, and cultural transmission are central to studying dance touring, and that digital methods of research and representation can greatly assist scholars in the comparative analysis and interpretation of this phenomenon. Considered are debates in dance, theatre, digital humanities, geography, and cultural studies to advocate for the use of digital methods in dance history research.