Anna Pavlova is widely considered to have been the most famous ballerina of all time. She was born on February 12, 1881, in St. Petersburg, Russia. She never knew her father, and her mother was a poor laundress.
When Anna was eight years old, her mother took her to a performance of the ballet Sleeping Beauty. Seeing that performance was the first thing that made Anna interested in ballet. She auditioned for a special ballet school, but she wasn’t admitted because the people at the school thought she was too young and small.
Two years later, at the age of ten, Anna finally entered the Imperial Ballet School. Her first role was as a cupid in a ballet called A Fairy Tale.
At that time, ballerinas were expected to be small and compact, but Anna was not. She was thin, and she had long legs, thin ankles, and very high arches on her feet. She had to work hard to become accepted as a ballerina, since her physical appearance was different from what people expected.
Because she had trouble standing in the traditional ballerina shoes, Anna added a piece of wood to the toe of her ballet slippers. They would eventually become the modern pointe shoes, now worn by ballerinas everywhere.
Even though she didn’t look like other dancers, Anna was soon the most famous ballerina in the world. She was most famous for her dance The Dying Swan. Anna died in 1931 at the age of 50.