She was a principal artist of the Imperial Russian Ballet and the Ballets Russes of Sergei Diaghilev.
Pavlova is most recognized for her creation of the role of The Dying Swan and, with her own company, became the first ballerina to tour around the world, including performances in South America, India and Australia.
Anna Matveyevna Pavlova was born in the Preobrazhensky Regiment hospital, Saint Petersburg where her father, Matvey Pavlovich Pavlov, served.
Some sources say that her parents married just before her birth, others -years later. Her mother, Lyubov Feodorovna Pavlova, came from peasants and worked as a laundress at the house of a Russian-Jewish banker, Lazar Polyakov, for some time.
When Anna rose to fame, Polyakov's son Vladimir claimed that she was an illegitimate daughter of his father; others speculated that Matvey Pavlov himself supposedly came from Crimean Karaites (there is even a monument built in one of Yevpatoria's kenesas dedicated to Pavlova), yet both legends find no historical proof. Anna Matveyevna changed her patronymic to Pavlovna when she started performing on stage.
Young Pavlova's years of training were difficult. Classical ballet did not come easily to her. Her severely arched feet, thin ankles, and long limbs clashed with the small, compact body favoured for the ballerina of the time. Her fellow students taunted her with such nicknames as The broom and La petite sauvage.
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Undeterred, Pavlova trained to improve her technique. She would practice and practice after learning a step. She said, No one can arrive from being talented alone. God gives talent, work transforms talent into genius.
She took extra lessons from the noted teachers of the day -Christian Johansson, Pavel Gerdt, Nikolai Legat- and from Enrico Cecchetti, considered the greatest ballet virtuoso of the time and founder of the Cecchetti method, a very influential ballet technique used to this day. In 1898, she entered the classe de perfection of Ekaterina Vazem, former Prima ballerina of the Saint Petersburg Imperial Theatres.
During her final year at the Imperial Ballet School, she performed many roles with the principal company. She graduated in 1899 at age 18, chosen to enter the Imperial Ballet a rank ahead of corps de ballet as a coryphée. She made her official début at the Mariinsky Theatre in Pavel Gerdt's Les Dryades prétendues (The False Dryads). Her performance drew praise from the critics, particularly the great critic and historian Nikolai Bezobrazov.
In the first years of the Ballets Russes, Pavlova worked briefly for Sergei Diaghilev. Originally, she was to dance the lead in Mikhail Fokine's The Firebird, but refused the part, as she could not come to terms with Igor Stravinsky's avant-garde score, and the role was given to Tamara Karsavina. All her life, Pavlova preferred the melodious musique dansante of the old maestros such as Cesare Pugni and Ludwig Minkus, and cared little for anything else which strayed from the salon-style ballet music of the 19th century.
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While travelling from Paris to The Hague, Pavlova became very ill, and worsened on her arrival in The Hague. She sent to Paris for her personal physician, Dr Zalewski to attend her.
She was told that she had pneumonia and required an operation. She was also told that she would never be able to dance again if she went ahead with it. She refused to have the surgery, saying If I can't dance, then I'd rather be dead. She died of pleurisy, in the bedroom next to the Japanese Salon of the Hotel Des Indes in The Hague, twenty days short of her 50th birthday.
Victor Dandré wrote that Pavlova died a half hour past midnight on Friday, 23 January 1931, with her maid Marguerite Létienne, Dr. Zalevsky, and himself at her bedside. Her last words were, Get my 'Swan' costume ready.
Dandré and Létienne dressed her body in her favorite beige lace dress and placed her in a coffin with a sprig of lilac. At 7 am, a Russian Orthodox priest arrived to say prayers over her body. At 7:30 am, her coffin was taken to the mortuary chapel attaching the Catholic hospital in The Hague.
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Anna Pavlova
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