Tamara Karsavina
Tamara Platonovna Karsavina (Russian: Тамара Платоновна Карсавина; 9 March 1885 – 26 May 1978) was a Russian prima ballerina, renowned for her beauty, who was a principal artist of the Imperial Russian Ballet and later of the Ballets Russes of Sergei Diaghilev. After settling in Britain at Hampstead in London, she began teaching ballet professionally and became recognised as one of the founders of modern British ballet. She assisted in the establishment of The Royal Ballet and was a founder member of the Royal Academy of Dance, which is now the world's largest dance-teaching organisation.
In this name that follows Eastern Slavic naming customs, the patronymic is Platonovna and the family name is Karsavina.
Tamara Karsavina
26 May 1978 (aged 93)
Ballet dancer
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Vasili Vasilievich Mukhin(m. 1907; div. 1917)
1
Personal life[edit]
In 1904, guided by her mother, Anna Iosifovna, Karsavina rejected a marriage proposal from Mikhail Fokine. This led to a simmering unease between the two, which coloured their future relationship. She later said that Fokine rarely spoke to her outside the ballet studio.[24]
In 1907, once again guided by her mother, she married the civil servant Vasili Vasilievich Mukhin (1880 – post 1941), in the chapel of the Ballet School. Mukhin occasionally travelled with her on Diaghilev tours.[25]
In June 1918, a year after her divorce from Mukhin, Karsavina married the British diplomat Henry James Bruce (1880–1951). He was the father of her son Nikita (1916–2002).[26]
Tamara 1912
Tamara Karsavina's favorite jewel
Graduate class of the Imperial Ballet School, 1902. Tamara Karsavina is the rightmost student
Tamara Karsavina In "L'Oiseau de feu" / Firebird (1910)
Karsavina moved to Hampstead, London, where she continued to socialize with luminaries from the ballet world.
She occasionally assisted with the revival of the ballets in which she had danced, notably Spectre de la Rose, in which she coached Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev. She was a ballet teacher to Lady Ursula Manners.[27] In 1959, Karsavina advised Sir Frederick Ashton on his important revival of La Fille Mal Gardée for the Royal Ballet. She taught him Petipa's original mimed dialogue for the celebrated scene "When I'm Married", as well as his choreography for the "Pas de Ruban", two passages which are still retained in Ashton's production.
Publications[edit]
Tamara Karsavina: "A Recollection of Strawinsky", in Tempo (New Series), No. 8 (Strawinsky Number), Summer 1948, pp. 7–9.
Tamara Karsavina. Theatre Street: The Reminiscences of Tamara Karsavina. London: Heinemann, March 1930; reprinted March 1930. With a foreword by J. M. Barrie. Karsavina's husband affirmed that she wrote her memoir herself, directly in English. Subsequent editions in Russian (and other languages) are translations of it. Second, revised, edition: London: Constable, 1948, and New York: E.P.Dutton, 1950. In a foreword to this edition, dated 20 October 1947, Karsavina states: "I finished writing this book on August 20, 1929, the day I heard of Diaghileff's death. I did not change then what I had written about him: I left him still alive as I had known him. In this revised edition I have done the same. But I have added a chapter in an attempt to bring some unity into the features of Diaghileff's personality, some of which features are scattered about the book."[28]