Ballet is an art form that has inspired and still inspires many people around the world. To learn this difficult dance style, the dancer needs both physical and mental endurance. It not only requires perfect body control, muscle strength, and flexibility but also hour-long training and dedication for this sport. For most professional ballet dancers, the ultimate goal to reach is perfection. But only a few dancers in history came close to this, were able to inspire millions of admirers, and became role models for many young dancers all around the world. One of them is the famous Russian ballet dancer Anna Pavlova, who is best known for her performance of “The Dying Swan”.
Anna Pavlova was born Anna Pavlovna Pavlova in St. Petersburg, Russia, on January 31, 1881, as the daughter of a washerwoman. She got mesmerized by the idea of ballet dancing already at a young age through her thriving creativity and fantasy. When she watched a performance of “The Sleeping Beauty” when she was an eight-year-old girl, she was fascinated by what she saw and cherished the dream to become a ballet dancer one day. Through her talent and the support of her mother, she got into the St. Petersburg Imperial Ballet School. The school had a very good reputation due to its director, the famous ballet dancer Marius Petipa. Petipa and her other teachers fostered her and her talent, but Pavlova also knew that she had to work hard if she wanted to achieve her life dream of dancing ballet professionally. With this much effort and hard work she put into herself, she graduated from the school in 1899.
In ballet, it is usual to dance in a corps the ballet (a large group of dancers) after graduating from a ballet school. Anna Pavlova was able to skip that step right away, and because of her extraordinary talent, she was able to dance with a small group of dancers. Her career path thrived immediately, and she started to gain attention from the public eye.
However, her ground-breaking performance of “The Dying Swan” became her best-known role and brought her a lot of fame and glory. The choreographer Michael Fokine created the role of “The Dying Swan” specially for her, and she performed it many times in her lifetime.
Also, her performance of “Giselle” got acknowledged and found admiration by the public and the critics.
In 1906, she received the title of prima ballerina.
In 1907, she and a few other ballet dancers went on a ballet tour through Europe, where they danced in different capitals, for example, Berlin, Copenhagen, and Prague.
Furthermore, in 1907, Pavlova made a big change in her career and founded her own ballet company. She could create her own roles, choreographies, and creative imaginations. For the following twenty years, she traveled with her company around the world, and the tours of her company were very successful.
On January 23, 1931, at the age of 49, she unfortunately died really early due to pneumonia that got worse rapidly. She was cremated at the Golden Green Cemetery in London, England.
To conclude, Anna Pavlova was one of the most influential ballerinas that we know, and she showed with her unique and etheric dance style the true meaning of ballet. Her legacy still lives on to this day.
Sources:
https://www.balletpapier.com/post/2015/04/15/the-hardest-aspect-of-being-a-ballet-dancer#:~:text=Ballet%20has%20to%20look%20easy,always%20make%20it%20appear%20effortless.
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Anna-Pavlova
https://www.biography.com/artists/anna-pavlova
