Tamara Platonovna Karsavina

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Tamara Karsawina, around 1920
Karsavina in 1911 in Petrushka .

Tamara Karsavina ( Russian Тамара Платоновна Карсавина ., Scientific transliteration Tamara Platonovna Karsavina ; born February 25 jul. / 9. March  1885 greg. In St. Petersburg , Russian Empire , died 26. May 1978 in Beaconsfield , England ) was a Russian ballet dancer and dance teacher.

Life

Karsawina's best-known interpretations were Lise in La Fille mal gardée , Medora in Le Corsaire and the Tsar's daughter in Das Humplige Pferdchen . She was the first ballerina to dance the Grand Pas de Deux from Le Corsaire .

In 1909 Karzavina became a member of the Ballets Russes . Her choreographer Michel Fokine choreographed her most famous roles for her, including the ballerina in Petrushka , the girl in Le Specter de la Rose and the title role in The Firebird .

After the October Revolution , she left Russia with her husband, the diplomat Henry James Bruce and their son , in 1918, and moved to London . There she taught ballet dance and repertoire at the Royal Ballet School and the Royal Ballet . Her most famous students were the later prima ballerinas Alicia Markova and Margot Fonteyn . Karsawina assisted the Royal Ballet with the resumption of the choreographies by Marius Petipa and Michel Fokine.

Karsawina co-founded the Royal Academy of Dance in 1920 .

She appeared on the screen in the 1925 film Paths to Strength and Beauty .

In her memoir “Theater Street”, which was written until 1947, she describes, among other things, the life of the middle class in Russia before and after the revolution, training at the Imperial Ballet School and her encounters with Sergei Djagilew , Pablo Picasso , Vaslav Nijinsky and Igor Stravinsky .

Trivia

Before the First World War, the English poet Osbert Sitwell attended a performance of Igor Stravinsky's Firebird's Ballet Russes , in which Tamara Karzavina danced the lead role. For Osbert Sitwell this was one of the formative experiences of his life. Around 35 years later he wrote in Good Morning

“I now knew where I was. As long as I lived, I would be on the side of the arts ... I would support the artist in every discussion and every opportunity. "

Klabund dedicated the poem Die Karsavina from the Russian ballet dances to Tamara Karsavina in 1927 .

literature

  • Tamara's house . Translation from the French Sarah Pasquay. Publishing house Jacoby & Stuart, Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-941787-41-4 .

Web links

Commons : Tamara Karsawina  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. Desmond Sitwell: Renishaw Hall: The Story of The Sitwells . Elliott and Thompson Limited, London 2015, ISBN 978-1-78396-184-9 '. P. 144.
  2. ^ Osbert Sitwell: Good Morning , p. 141