BALLERINA RUSSIAA gleam! a flash! a shimmering vision of beauty! . . . Is it some creature from fairyland, some spirit of ethereal grace freed from the terrestrial trammels of the flesh? . . . No. Merely Pavlova, the incomparable Pavlova.
—MANCHESTER EVENING NEWS, 1925
The streets of St. Petersburg were covered in white snow. Everything glistened and shone under the streetlights as Anna’s sleigh glided silently through the city. A snowflake landed on her nose, and she and her mother laughed with happiness. They were going to the ballet. Anna had never been, but just the word ballet seemed full of magic to her. “You are going to see the country of the fairies,” her mother whispered. Anna couldn’t wait.
The Mariinsky Theatre was the most beautiful place Anna had ever seen—the blue velvet, the gold paint, the lavish gowns, the gleaming chandeliers. As soon as she heard the music of Tchaikovsky and saw the ballerinas step into their dance of Sleeping Beauty, Anna began to tremble. It was all so beautiful, she was overwhelmed; she felt almost sick. Little Anna sat entranced until the lights came up again and she declared excitedly to her mother, “One day I will dance by myself, like Sleeping Beauty. One day I will, and in this very theater!” Her mother laughed, but Anna knew it was the truth.
Anna and the other students at the Imperial Ballet School often performed for the Tsar of Russia, Alexander III.
No one would have guessed that Anna would ever have the strength and stamina to become a dancer like she dreamed. She was born prematurely and was so small that her parents rushed to have her baptized so if she died, her soul would be saved. She surprised them and survived, but she was often ill. After her father died when Anna was two, she and her mother had very little money. Sometimes they had nothing to eat but rye bread and cabbage soup. Anna grew up undernourished and was a skinny, sickly child.
When Anna was eight, her mother saved every penny so she could give her daughter a special treat, the night at the ballet, the night Anna found her future. Her mother was skeptical of Anna’s dreams but took her to the Imperial Ballet School to stop her pleading. When the school told Anna she was too young and would need to return and audition in two years, her mother thought that was the end of it. But not for Anna.
She spent the next two years imitating every move she saw that night at the ballet, and on her tenth birthday she went for her auditions. The examinations were difficult and competitive; about two hundred fifty children auditioned each year, and only twelve got in. But Anna’s two years of hard work had paid off, and she was chosen. She immediately moved into the school. After a childhood of poverty, the Imperial Ballet School seemed like heaven on earth to Anna. Not only did she get three hearty meals a day, plus medical attention, she also studied dance, piano, acting, and pantomime.
After eight years of training, Anna graduated and joined the Imperial Ballet. At eighteen, she danced in her first public performance. Anna was unlike anything Russian audiences had ever seen. Tall, muscular dancers were the style of the time, while Anna was short and thin. But her unusual grace and fragile beauty set her apart, and her exquisite dancing caught everyone’s attention. Within a few years she was promoted to prima ballerina (the ballet’s star).
As Anna’s popularity grew, she left St. Petersburg and danced in the major cities of Russia. Before long, requests to see this new talent were pouring in from other countries as well, and soon, Anna was dancing all over Europe. Her fame spread across the Atlantic, and in 1910 Anna sailed to America, where she made her debut at New York City’s world-famous Metropolitan Opera House.
Anna loved traveling and knew she could earn a great deal more money outside of Russia. So, although the Russian Ballet offered her the highest salary in its history, in 1912 she decided to leave her home country for good. She moved to a magnificent estate in London. A woman with many dreams, Anna now had the money to realize them. She started a dance school for young girls and also formed her own dance company.
Although Anna was small, her appetite was not. One interviewer wrote, “To see the delicate, fragile Pavlova, whose waist I could span with the fingers of my two hands, attack that two-inch steak made me gasp.” She even drank gallons of cod liver oil in her efforts to put on weight!
With a family-like community of dancers to support, Anna and her troupe soon departed on a successful six-month tour of America. When they returned to Europe, political tension was high. Little did Anna know it would be the last time she would ever dance in Russia. The First World War was about to sweep across the continent and change life in Europe forever. Anna was performing in Berlin when the war started, but managed to get to England on one of the last boats to cross the English Channel before war broke out! She took her company back to America, with no idea how they would support themselves while the world was at war.
When she was very busy dancing, Anna would use up to 2,000 pairs of ballet shoes a year! That’s over five pairs each night!
Another of Anna’s dreams was to expose all people, rich and poor, all over the world, to the beauty of ballet. So over the next decade she did her best to bring ballet to every corner of the globe, dancing in such exotic locations as Cuba, Costa Rica, Brazil, China, Japan, Indonesia, India, Egypt, and New Zealand. Anna introduced these countries to ballet, but they introduced her to their native dances and costumes. Because of her world travels, Anna’s dances became more exotic and colorful.
Many of the countries she visited didn’t have appropriate theaters to host the dancers. But that didn’t stop Anna. In Mexico City, she and her company danced for thirty thousand fans inside a huge bullring! The heat was so intense that many of the dancers nearly passed out. Not Anna. Even when a tropical storm hit, she continued dancing in the rain until the stage became dangerously slick and they had to pull her off! The delighted crowd showered Anna with their sombreros.
Dancing is my gift and my life . . . God gave me this gift to bring delight to others. . . . I am haunted by the need to dance. . . . It is the purest expression of every emotion, earthly and spiritual. It is happiness.
—ANNA PAVLOVA
Throughout her career, but especially after the horrors of World War I, Anna was extremely compassionate and generous with her talents. She often gave benefit performances to raise money for wounded soldiers, war veterans, widows, orphans, the poor, and the homeless. She even adopted and raised a group of refugee girls. But her contributions never felt like enough to Anna, who said, “I can offer nothing but my art. It is a poor thing when such brave deeds are being done.”
This desire to always do more drove her. In an interview she said, “I feel that, if I were ever quite satisfied, any power I possess would leave me. It is the divine discontent that drives us artists always onward.” Although she had plenty of money to stop working, Anna never considered it. Even when she turned fifty years old, she would not retire. Her dedication may have hastened her death. In 1931, in between sold-out tours, Anna died from an illness made critical by her lack of rest.
In a time before airplanes and freeways, Anna traveled more than five hundred thousand miles, giving thousands of performances for millions of people. For most of these audiences, Anna was their first glimpse at ballet. And just as Anna the child began dreaming during her first visit to the ballet, Anna the prima ballerina spent the rest of her life introducing people to her dream, hoping to inspire the world.
AGE 13