Anna Pavlova, born in St. Petersburg in 1881 she was the greatest ballerina of all time, a legend capable of transcending the beauty of dance and her character. Hers was a poor peasant family and at the age of eight she was taken by her mother to the theater to see a performance of "Sleeping Beauty" who made her understand that she wanted to become a dancer, and so it was.
A memorable memory of Anna Pavlova, taken from the book "Flight off the season" by André Olivéroff of 1932.
The secret of her greatness was her very origin, her courageous and iron commitment to the art she loved, in her lived that unceasing commitment which is the other name of an evident genius. Every morning at the barre, day after day, always repeating the exercises she had learned before the age of sixteen Petersburg Imperial Ballet School. She always tried to achieve perfection, which was achieved for everyone but never for herself.
Anna, it seemed that she flew away with the wind, like the lightest feathers of a swan. And every time she made her entrance there was a box of rosin ready for her, which she rubbed on the toes of her shoes so as not to slip on the stage. She then she remained motionless on her toes, fluttering like a butterfly, to let the pitch in. Everything was a ritual, she first leaned forward and pressed the palms of her hands to the ground to loosen her back muscles, and then she stretched her feet forward, backward and finally sideways. When she felt nervous she crossed herself. When all preparations were finished, she would stand in the wings, leaning with one hand on a stage, one leg in front of the other, with the toes of her shoes at right angles, and waiting for the orchestra to give her the signal to enter. So she threw her arms back, straight and stiff, in a gesture that she seemed to leave everything behind… and she took flight on her winged feet. What distinguished her and made her magical was her way of walking, her elegant, light but above all unmistakable bearing. She was so different, so refined, that she expressed in every moment the quintessence of her luminous personality. This walking of hers didn't hide any trick to catch on the public, she moved in a natural way, almost like an exotic and haughty bird.
He could not escape the fascination that his personality gave off, so connected with the elegance of his body, of his own gait. Hers was a combination of grace with extraordinary strength and endurance. It was her arched feet that kept a secret that no one, looking at her from the audience, could have discovered, a secret that gave an incomparable finesse to her dance. Then her face, so expressive that it seemed to merge with the expressive strength of the entire body, to the point of making a unicum, an instrument of perfection on which her imagination was infinitely expressed.
She moved her body as if it were music, every note in the scale of human emotion, as when seen dancing the Christmas Waltz. While in the part of Cleopatra a charmer, she embodied all the seduction of a sophisticated world. While in Gisella it aroused an overwhelming tenderness for that girl who was too fragile for this earth. But it's in Swan that she carried the spectators as on wings into the fantastic world of nature, a world which, at the wine-making touch of a genius, became full of meaning. So that the death of the Swan became the symbol of all deaths, and the flutter of the butterfly the symbol of all joys. Anna Pavlova, a dancing swan that no one will ever forget.
