The Story Of Ballerina Anna Pavlova

Anna Pavlova was born January 31, 1881 in St. Petersburg, Russia. Her mother was a poor washerwoman and her father was unknown, although it is believed he died when she was age two. Born premature, she was a very delicate, frail child who spent her summers with her grandmother. It wasn't until she was eight years old, after seeing a performance of The Sleeping Beauty, did she know she wanted to become a dancer. At the age of ten, she was accepted to the St. Petersburg Imperial Ballet School where she had to give her complete dedication to her ballet studies. Although she was slim, fragile and not to attractive, she was spotted by the famous ballet master Marius Petipa, who was taken with her agility and flexibility, schooling her in the fundamentals of classic Russian ballet. With added training by other famous dancers and choreographers at the Maryinsky Theater, she made her company debut September 1899. Anna soon became a favorite for the artistic and passionate beauty in her dancing. 1907 in Moscow, she began the first of her many tours and came to American in 1910, performing at the Metropolitan Opera House.

While most Americans had not seen her form of classic ballet, all agreed they loved her. In 1912, Anna purchased the Ivy House in England where she opened her own school of dance, and lived there for the remainder of her life. Her early tours were with the consent of the czar, but while traveling to London in 1914, Germany declared war on her homeland and her commitments to the Maryinsky Theater ended. In 1923 she toured Japan, China, South Africa and Australia and in 1926 she performed for the first time in New Zealand. She dedicated her tour in 1927-28 to Europe. Her last world tour was from 1928 to 1929 and her last appearance was in England in 1930.

Anna Pavlova was also featured in some silent movies, most noted for her role in The Immortal Swan, shot in 1924, but was not shown until after her death. In 15 years this remarkable woman traveled 300,000 miles and gave 4,000 performances, all without the use of air travel. Anna Pavlova died January 22, 1931 of pleurisy, performing up until her death. She was, and maybe still is, the world's most famous dancer, giving the world a new sense of the creative dance form known as classic ballet.

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The Story Of Ballerina Marie Camargo

Ballerina Marie Anne de Cupis de Camargo, occasionally known as La Camargo, was born on the 15th of April 1710 in Brussels. She was a French/Belgian dancer known for being the first woman to perform the entrechat quatre, a move where the dancer crosses their legs over four times in the air. She also was very innovative in her dancing days and is famous for the introduction of wearing slippers in place of heeled shoes. She is also famous for being the first female to wear a short calf-length ballet skirt, with tights underneath, which are now a standard part of dress for ballerinas. Her father, Ferdinand Joseph de Cupis, was a violinist and also a dance master. Marie was trained from early childhood to perform on the stage.

The first dancer at the Paris Opera, Francoise Prevost, became her dance instructor when she was only ten and through that connection she gain the role as premiere daneuse in Brussels and then later at Rouen. On 5 May, 1726 she made her debut in Paris, at the Paris Opera ballet, in the production Les Caracteres de la Danse. It was here that she performed the entrechat quatre and began to gain fame. She soon afterwards introduced wearing slippers and shortened skirts, which eventually became regulation length. Because of these innovative ideas, her name was soon given to every new fashion. She was then copied by many, even to the extent that all those who came to court began to copy her hairstyles.

Among her list of admirers was Count Louis de Bourbon of Clermont, who was one of many who were nearly ruined by her extravagance. She became his mistress and at his request, she retired from the stage for several years from 1736 to 1741. In 1741, she then resumed her dancing career for ten more years before retiring on a government pension in 1751. During her career, she performed in 78 ballets and operas. She had a famous portrait painted by Nicolas Lancret that exists in several versions. Some of these works are now placed in the Wallace Collection, London and in the National Gallery of Art, Washington DC. One thing that is interesting about these paintings is that she is portrayed in heeled shoes while poised a demi point. On April 28th 1770, after a brilliant career, the ballerina Marie de Camargo died in Paris at the age of 60.

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