Tamara Karsavina Dies;Prima Ballerina for Diaghilev (Published 1978) (2025)

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Tamara Karsavina Dies;Prima Ballerina for Diaghilev (Published 1978) (1)

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Tamara Karsavina, one of the greatest ballerinas of her generation, died in her sleep at the age of 93 Friday in the London nursing home where she had lived for the past few years, Reuters reported from London.

Born in St. Petersburg, Russia, she was the daughter of the dancer Platon Karsavin and was trained at the Imperial Ballet School. After her graduation, she made her debut with the Maryinsky (now Kirov) Ballet in 1902. Yet although she was named ballerina in 1909 and danced all the traditional classics, it was as an interpreter of modern ballets that she received her greatest acclaim.

Had Great Beauty

Mme. Karsavina was one of the stars of Serge Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, the innovative company founded in 1909 that sought to make ballet a perfect blending of imaginative choreography, music and stage design. For Diaghilev, she created leading roles in works that have since attained the status of modern classics, including “The Firebird,” “Petrouchka,” “The Specter of the Rose” and “The Three‐Cornered Hat.”

A woman of great beauty, intelligence and charm, she was ideally suited to bridge the change from the old style of ballet to the new. Writing later in her life of the old style of ballet before Diaghilev, she said. “We of the ballet were uncritical at this time: there was no intellectual fermentation as yet amongst us.”

Range Was Wide

However, Michel Fokine, the first of the young choreographers to be encouraged by Diaghilev, was beginning to stir up ideas within the ranks at the Maryinsky, urging that dancing be expressive of mature emotion. When Diaghilev formed his company, Fokine became his principal choreographer and Mme. Karsavina's performances were considered proof of Fokine's contentions that ballet could be a serious and sophisticated art.

In several ballets, including “Petrouchka” and “Specter of the Rose,” she was the partner of the legendary male dancer Vaslev Nijinsky, and their performances, which united technical excellence with dramatic expressiveness, electrified audiences of the time. Because of her willingness to experiment, choreographers found her an ideal dancer upon whom to set their ballets.

Her range was wide and Fokine took advantage of it in several ballets choreographed between 1909 and 1914. In “Les Sylphides,” she was a spirit of the air; in “Carnaval,” a coquettish Columbine; in “Petrouchka,” a malicious Ballerina Doll. Her Girl in “Specter of the Rose” was a dreaming innocent. Yet her “Firebird” was truly a magic bird, rather than simply a ballerina dressed as a bird. And she was both beautiful and heartless in the title role of “Thamar,” a ballet about a cruel princess who murders a new lover every night.

Mme. Karsavina also worked with the choreographer Leonide Massine, portraying the vibrant Miller's Wife in “The Three‐Cornered Hat,” a 1919 collaboration with music by Manuel de Falla and designs by Pablo Picasso. She also created the role of Pimpinella in Massine's “Pulcinella,” a commedia dell' arte frolic designed by Picasso with music by Igor Stravinsky.

Escaped to England

Lydia Sokolova, another ballerina of the Diaghilev company, wrote in her autobiography that “Tamara Karsavina was one of the rare dancers who gripped your attention whether you were watching her from the stage, from the wings or from the front of the house. I could not bear to miss any movement she made, and was sometimes so reluctant to stop watching her from the wings when I should have beer changing my costume, that I was nearly late for my entrance.”

Mme. Karsavina enjoyed one of the great successes of Diaghilev's titst Paris season in 1909. But where the brilliance of other careers dimmed with subsequent seasons and with ensuing changes of style, Mme. Karsavina proved that she could adapt herself to modernism, impressionism and surrealism with equal distinction. She told the story of her early life in ballet in her autobiography, “Theatre Street,” published in 1931.

Before the Russian Revolution of 1917, Mme. Karsavina divided her time between the Diaghilev company, which toured the capitals of Western Europe. She was in Russia at the time of the Revolution and was elected president of the cancers' committee at the Maryinsky, where she processed complaints about salaries. In 1918 she left for England, which was to become her home.

Her appearances with the Diaghilev company grew less frequent in the 1920's and she enjoyed the status of guest artist. She also toured the United States with a small group, making her American debut at Carnegie Hall on Nov. 2, 1924.

During the early 1930's she assisted in the development of ballet in Britain by appearing as guest artist with the Ballet Rambert, one of the pioneering companies of the period, creating the role of Venus in “Mercury” by Frederick Ashton, the young English choreographer who eventually became director of what is now known as the Royal Ballet.

Mme. Karsavina retired from the stage in 1933 yet remained active in the world of British ballet, teaching, lecturing and writing on the dance. She was the author of two textbooks on ballet technique, “Ballet Technique” (1956) and “Classical Ballet: The Flow of Movement” (1962).

Several British companies made use of her knowledge during the 1950's and early '60's. She assisted both the Royal Ballet and Western Theater Ballet (now the Scottish Ballet) in revivals of the classics and of works from the Diaghilev repertory, among them “Giselle,” “Carnaval” “Specter of the Rose” and “Firebird.” She also helped Mr. Ashton stage the mime scenes in his production of “La Mlle Mal Gardee,” a new treatment of a ballet dating from 1789 that she knew in a Russian version in St. Petersburg.

Mme. Karsavma was twice married. Her first husband was Vasily Moukhin. In 1917 she became the wife of Henry Bruce, an English diplomat. Mr. Bruce died in 1951. They had one son.

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