Eva Evdokimova

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Eva Evdokimova (born December 1, 1948 in Geneva , † April 3, 2009 in New York ) was an American prima ballerina .

Life

Eva Evdokimova, daughter of an exiled Bulgarian and an American, grew up in Munich and studied at the Royal Ballet School in London from 1959 . In 1966 she became a member of the Royal Danish Ballet before joining the Ballet of the Deutsche Oper in Berlin in 1969 . Here she celebrated her first great successes, especially in Giselle and La Sylphide , and was the prima ballerina from 1973 to 1985. 67 curtains were her Berlin record. Under the direction of Gert Reinholm , Valery Panov choreographed the roles that were tailor-made for her.

In addition to her appearances in Berlin, guest appearances have taken Evdokimova around the world. At the invitation of Natalja Dudinskaja, she performed with the Kirov Ballet , where she was named Prima Ballerina Assoluta . She had other engagements with the American Ballet Theater , the ballet company of La Scala in Milan , the Ballet de l'Opéra de Paris , the National Ballet of Canada, the Ballet Nacional de Cuba, the Stuttgart Ballet , the Tokyo Ballet and others. For 15 years Rudolf Nureyev was her most frequent partner, with whom she “performed in almost every city in the world”. She first performed with him in 1971 in La Sylphide . In 1975 she was the first Sleeping Beauty in his production for the London Festival Ballet (now English National Ballet ), a company for which she was a permanent guest ballerina for many years. Well-known choreographers such as George Balanchine ( Apollo [1957] ; Terpsichore), Anton Dolin ( Pas de Quatre ; Maria Taglioni ) and John Cranko , Birgit Cullberg or Glen Tetley worked with her.

After Evdokimova received only a diploma at the Moscow Ballet Competition in 1970, she invited Galina Ulanova to the International Ballet Competition in Varna , where she was awarded a gold medal that same year as the first American female prize winner. Her repertoire included around 125 different roles, from classics such as Swan Lake and Sleeping Beauty to August Bournonville's The Flower Festival in Genzano to Henning Rübsam's Litany and Spring Faith , which the choreographer created for one of her last appearances in 2002 after two Schubert songs.

In 1985 Evdokimova left Berlin because, in her opinion, the German opera houses paid too little attention to ballet. She founded her own ballet company in New York, with which she was less successful than with her work as a teacher and trainer. The ballet schools she directed included those of the Bavarian State Opera and the London Royal Ballet School. With the Boston Ballet she was ballet master for one season. Back in New York, she taught at Ballet Arts and flew around the world to judge ballet competitions and to teach at Marika Besobrasova's ballet school in Japan or Monaco.

In 2005 she was awarded the Ulanowa Prize on the stage of the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow.

Evdokimova was married to Michael S. Gregori. She died in 2009 of complications from cancer .

Quote

“His stage presence. The beauty of its technique and the quality of its movement. His sense of space. Rudolf opened up completely new insights for me. ”Eva Evdokimova about Rudolf Nureyev in an interview in 1984.

literature

  • Einar Sundstrom, Gosta Morin, Carl-Allan Moberg (eds.): Sohlman's musiklexikon . Sohlman Forlag, Stockholm 1975-79.
  • Portrait of an artist: Eva Evdokimova , Stapp Verlag, Berlin 1981, ISBN 3-87776-704-4 [1]

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b quoted from: Eva Evdomikova, Ballerina, Dies at 60 . Obituary in The New York Times, April 6, 2009.
  2. ↑ sh / dpa: Berlin's ex-prima ballerina died. In: Der Tagesspiegel. April 3, 2009, accessed April 20, 2011 .
personal data
SURNAME Evdokimova, Eva
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American ballet dancer
DATE OF BIRTH December 1, 1948
PLACE OF BIRTH Geneva
DATE OF DEATH April 3, 2009
Place of death new York