Anna Pavlova Research Articles

The Dictionary of national biography. Missing persons

This new volume of the of National Biography contains details of the lives of 1086 individuals who were omitted from previous volumes. The original DNB covering the lives of famous persons who lived and died prior to 1900 was compiled in an alphabetical sequence between 1885 and 1900; three supplementary volumes followed almost immediately to include entrants who had missed their alphabetical sequence in the main work. After 1900 the Dictionary was continued by means of supplements (generally decennial) covering those who had died during the intervening period. Entrants not chosen for the volume covering the decade in which they died could not be included in future volumes. Thus, those who acquired posthumous fame, or whose achievements were unrecognized by the editors' attention for whatever reason, missed being included in this standard work of reference. This new volume is intended to redress the balance. It covers the whole historical period up to 1985. The choice of entrants not only aims to rectify earlier oversights but also reflects scholarly developments in British history as well as more general changes in social outlook over the period. Thus, for example, there are proportionately nearly four times as many women in this volume as in the original DNB, while a richer concentration of representatives from the developing worlds of commerce and finance, industry and science from the 16th to the mid-19th centuries points to areas of relatively recent attention by historians of the period. Similarly, the selection of some religious radicals of the 17th century singles out individuals whose significance has now been uncovered by modern scholarship. Of the book's entrants, 95 were born before 1500, 215 between 1501 and 1700, 443 between 1701 and 1850, and 333 between 1851 and 1985. Some famous names included at last in the DNB are: Thomas Traherne, Joe Acklerley, Maud Gonne, Wilfred Owen, Sylvia Pankhurst, J. C. Bach, Guy Burgess, George Hepplewhite, Alice Keppel, John Crockford, Gertrude Jekyll, Charles Laughton, Henry Hoare, Anna Pavlova, and Gerard Manley Hopkins.

Archives of the Dance: The Royal Ballet School Archives

The Royal Ballet School's museum and archives were initiated when the Sadler's Wells Ballet School acquired White Lodge, in Richmond Park, as its home in 1955. A new studio the Pavlova studio was added to the house in that year, built with funds donated by Victor Dandre, as a memorial to Anna Pavlova. From October 1956, when the Sadler's Wells organisation was granted a Royal Charter and became the Royal Ballet, items were bequeathed or loaned to White Lodge, including Cyril Beaumont's gift of a costume sketch and wig for Anna Pavlova in

Ida Rubinstein: A Twentieth-Century Cleopatra

… to see Mme. R. stand on the stage before the curtain goes up and be wrapped in yards of mummy bandage for her role in Cléopâtre is an incomparable sight… a respectful, silent circle of stage hands and extras form around her, diminishing as she disappears beneath her veils. One night I had the honor of helping Mme. Rubinstein on stage for her bandaging — she is unable to walk alone because of the height of her clogs — and as I felt the tremulous pressure of her palm on my shoulders, I thought of the Cleopatra of Flaubert.Ida Rubinstein made her first Western European appearance in the title role of Cléopâtre at the Théâtre du Châtelet on June 2, 1909. It was the second evening of Diaghilev's dance programs of that memorable first Paris season, and Ida Rubinstein would have to compete not only with Vaslav Nijinsky and Tamara Karsavina, both of whom had created a furor on the opening program, but also with Anna Pavlova, whose reputation as a dancer had preceded her to Paris.

Albertina Rasch: The concert career and the concept of the American ballet

The general public has always had difficulty in accepting ballet as an American art form; this prejudice was even more prevalent during the 1920s and 1930s, when the most popular ballet dancers were usually foreign: Anna Pavlova, Mikhail Mordkin, Adolph Bolm, and later the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, which began touring America in 1933. Albertina Rasch (1891-1967), although foreign born and trained in Vienna, was concerned with making ballet American from the time that she first came to this country in 1910 to appear at the New York Hippodrome. Over the next thirty years she adapted her teaching, her technique, and her choreographic ideas to what she felt were American idioms-without rejecting the discipline, training, and form of the European ballet traditions she was born and bred to. She was not always successful in equating her theories with the realization of American ballet, but she was a pioneer in expanding the horizons for the ballet dancer from the concert stage to Broadway musicals and, finally, motion pictures. To gain an understanding of Rasch's approach to ballet in America, her work should be investigated in three areas: her theories as they appeared in print between 1927 and 1931;

The significance of the Russian Orthodox diaspora and its effect on the Christian west

The enforced emigrations caused by political or religious conflicts have often been an enriching and stimulating factor in the cultural history of mankind.Lenin’s dictatorship based on red terror forced more than a million Russians to flee from their own country and settle down in various parts of the world. The Russian diaspora included a great variety of people, among them many well-known men. It will suffice to mention a few names: Ivan Bunin (1870–1953), Dimitry Merezhkovsky (1865–1941) in literature; Sergy Rachmaninov (1873–1943) and Igor Stravinsky (1882–1971) in music; Vasily Kandinsky (1866–1944) in painting; Fedor Chaliapin (1873–1938) and Anna Pavlova (1881–1931) in the theatre; Mikhail Rostovtsev (1870–1952) and Georgy Vernadsky (1887–1973) in history; Igor Sikorsky (1889–1972) in aviation; Nikolay Menschokov (b. 1900) in geology. All these people made a substantial contribution to the contemporary world of art and learning.