1. Ottilie Ethel Leopoldine Herbert, Countess of Carnarvon, known professionally as Tilly Losch, was an Austrian dancer, choreographer, actress, and painter who lived and worked for most of her life in the United States and United Kingdom.
22 Facts About Tilly Losch
1. 2.
Tilly Losch became a member of the corps de ballet on March 1,1918 and a coryphee three years later.
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Tilly Losch danced prominently in new ballets by Kroeller, Georgi Kyaksht, and Nicola Guerra.
4.
Outside the Opera, Tilly Losch took modern dance class with Grete Wiesenthal and Mary Wigman, and performed dramatic and movement roles in Viennese theaters, at the Salzburg Festival and in Max Reinhardt's 1924 Berlin production of A Midsummer Night's Dream, choreographing the William Shakespeare play.
5.
Tilly Losch resigned from the Vienna Opera on August 31,1927, in order to work more with Reinhardt at the Salzburg Festival and in New York City.
6.
Tilly Losch made her London debut in 1928 in Cochran's production of Noel Coward's musical revue This Year of Grace, and over the course of the next few years, worked in London and New York as both a dancer and choreographer.
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Reinhardt encouraged her to extend herself and believed she could act; casting her in a 1932 London production of The Miracle, Tilly Losch's part was rewritten to provide her with the only spoken dialogue in the production which she recited to dramatic effect.
8.
Tilly Losch danced the leading role and Lotte Lenya, with whom she had a love affair at that time, sang it.
9.
Tilly Losch was divorced by James in 1934, after being accused by him of adultery with Prince Serge Obolensky, a Russian-American hotel executive; her countersuit, in which she made it clear that her husband was homosexual, failed.
10.
Tilly Losch extended her work into drama, and achieved her greatest popularity in England.
11.
Tilly Losch appeared in several screen productions including Limelight, The Garden of Allah, The Good Earth, and Duel in the Sun.
12.
Tilly Losch's choreography was seen in Song of Scheherazade.
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Tilly Losch guested with Ballet Theatre in New York in a work by Antony Tudor and in London danced Leonide Massine choreography.
14.
Tilly Losch's best known conception was "The Hand Dance" which is featured in a short dance film by Norman Bel Geddes.
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Prominent choreographers who made roles for Tilly Losch include Sir Frederick Ashton, Fred Astaire, George Balanchine, Heinrich Kroeller, Leonide Massine, and Antony Tudor.
16.
Tilly Losch began painting, first in watercolors and then later in oils.
17.
Tilly Losch mounted her first exhibition in New York City in 1944, and was well received by critics; the prominent collector and museum founder Albert C Barnes bought one of Losch's works from her Dutch debut show.
18.
Tilly Losch later combined visual elements of dance into her paintings, and often placed her subjects on a backdrop that evoked scenes of the war in Europe.
19.
Tilly Losch's works were eventually purchased by London's Tate and other galleries.
20.
Tilly Losch died from cancer in New York on December 24,1975.
21.
Tilly Losch bequeathed many of her personal documents, sketches, paintings, and photographs to the Max Reinhardt Archives at Binghamton University, State University of New York.
22.
Tilly Losch's ashes are interred in the grounds of Leopoldskron Castle, near Salzburg.