Tamara Platonovna Karsavina 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.
21 Facts About Tamara Karsavina
2.
Tamara Karsavina assisted in the establishment of The Royal Ballet and was a founder member of the Royal Academy of Dance, which is the world's largest dance-teaching organisation.
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Tamara Karsavina was born in Saint Petersburg, the daughter of Platon Konstantinovich Karsavin and his wife, Anna Iosifovna.
4.
Tamara Karsavina counted among his students Michel Fokine, a future dancing partner and paramour of his daughter.
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Tamara Karsavina's father had once been the favorite pupil of Marius Petipa, teacher and choreographer, but their relationship deteriorated in later years.
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Tamara Karsavina suspected that Petipa was behind the "political intrigue" that resulted in her father being forced into early retirement.
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In 1894, after a rigorous examination, Tamara Karsavina was accepted at the Imperial Ballet School.
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At her mother's urging, Tamara Karsavina chose to graduate ahead of schedule in early 1902.
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Tamara Karsavina was the first ballerina to dance in the so-called Le Corsaire Pas de Deux in 1915.
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Tamara Karsavina was perhaps most famous for creating the title role in Fokine's The Firebird with Vaslav Nijinsky, her occasional partner.
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Tamara Karsavina left Russia in 1918, just before Red Terror was launched by the Bolsheviks at the beginning of the Russian Civil War, and moved to Paris, where she continued her association with the Ballets Russes as a leading ballerina.
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In 1904, guided by her mother, Anna Iosifovna, Tamara Karsavina rejected a marriage proposal from Mikhail Fokine.
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Tamara Karsavina later said that Fokine rarely spoke to her outside the ballet studio.
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In June 1918, a year after her divorce from Mukhin, Tamara Karsavina married the British diplomat Henry James Bruce.
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Tamara Karsavina was the father of her son Nikita.
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Tamara Karsavina moved to Hampstead, London, where she continued to socialize with luminaries from the ballet world.
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Tamara Karsavina 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.
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Tamara Karsavina was a ballet teacher to Lady Ursula Manners.
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In 1959, Tamara Karsavina advised Sir Frederick Ashton on his important revival of La Fille Mal Gardee for the Royal Ballet.
20.
Tamara Karsavina 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.
21.
Tamara Karsavina's husband affirmed that she wrote her memoir herself, directly in English.