Ballet dancer, born in St Petersburg, NW Russia. She trained at the Imperial Ballet School under Cecchetti, joined the Mariinsky Theatre (1902), and became one of the original members of Diaghilev's Ballets Russes in Paris, partnering Nijinsky in ballets by Michel Fokine (190914). She married an English diplomat and moved with him to London (1918), where she became vice-president of the Royal Academy of Dancing until 1955. She coached Margot Fonteyn, and wrote several books, including the autobiographical Theatre Street (1930), Ballet Technique (1956), and Classical Ballet (1962).
Tamara Platonovna Karsavina (March 10, 1885 – May 26, 1978) was a famous Russian ballerina who eventually settled in England, where she helped found the Royal Academy of Dancing in 1920.
Personal life and career
Karsavina was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, the daughter of the dancer Platon Karsavin. Beautiful and talented from an early age, Karsavina quickly moved through the ranks of professional ballet. After graduating from the Imperial Ballet School, she was a leading ballerina of Tsar's Imperial Ballet, dancing the whole of the Petipa repertory. It was during her years with the company that she created many of her most famous roles in the ballets of Mikhail Fokine, including Petrushka, and Le Spectre de la Rose.
She left Russia in 1917 after the revolution, and subsequently continued her association with the Ballet Russe as a leading Ballerina.
Her wonderful memoir, Theatre Street, focus on her training to be a ballerina, and her career at the Mariinsky and for the Ballet Russes. Tamara Karsavina was renowned for her beauty, and in the ultra-competitive world of ballet, she was almost universally beloved.
In 1917 she married diplomat Henry James Bruce and moved to London, where she taught and wrote about ballet. The two were as much friends as they were lovers, and Karsavina was one of the few who continued to be friendly toward de Acosta following the controversial autobiography released by the latter, exposing many of her (de Acosta's) lesbian relationships with Hollywood's elite to the public. Scandalously under-used by the management of the Royal Opera House, she occasionally assisted at the revival of the ballets in which she danced, notably 'Spectre de la Rose' (in which she coached Fonteyn and Nureyev), and advised Frederick Ashton in his choreographing of 'La Fille Mal Gardee".
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