Celebrating The Kirov
Words | Joanna Hunter The long-awaited return of The Kirov Ballet to British shores next month is one of the major cultural highlights of the year SUPPOSE YOU WERE asked to name the ballet greats. Chances are you would immediately reel off Rudolf Nureyev, Mikhail Baryshnikov and Anna Pavlova. And what most unites these legendary [...]
Words | Joanna Hunter
The long-awaited return of The Kirov Ballet to British shores
next month is one of the major cultural highlights of the year
alt="Kirov dancers performing a pas de deux in Don Quixote">
SUPPOSE YOU WERE asked to
name the ballet greats. Chances
are you would immediately
reel off Rudolf Nureyev, Mikhail
Baryshnikov and Anna Pavlova.
And what most unites these legendary figures? All were
members of the resident company of the Mariinsky Theatre
of St Petersburg, more famously known as The Kirov Ballet.
Without doubt one of the most famous and influential
performing companies in the world, The Kirov, along with its
sibling rival The Bolshoi in Moscow, has helped ensure that
Russian ballet’s reputation for setting the standards in the
ballet world for over 200 years continues apace.
Famed for its purity of style, The Kirov is particularly
celebrated for its George Balanchine productions, as well as
its performances of Marius Petipa’s Sleeping Beauty and
two acts of Swan Lake, both of which were created
especially for the company.
alt="The Mariinsky Theatre in St Petersburg">
It wasn’t that long ago that a visit to St Petersburg would
have been a real challenge for travellers and Kirov foreign
tours were an all-too-rare treat, not least because dancers
sometimes used them as a chance to defect; Nureyev did so
dramatically in Paris in 1961. But East-West ballet relations
have thawed, and not only can you now see The Kirov in
situ, but you also get a chance to see some of the most
skilled dancers in the world perform outside of Russia.
Next month, The Kirov will make a very special
appearance in the UK, performing at The Lowry (13-17 May)
in Salford, Greater Manchester, only one and a half miles
from Manchester city centre. It then makes its debut at the
Birmingham Hippodrome (20-24 May). The company will
perform Balanchine’s Jewels, described by The Guardian as
“some of the most beautiful classical fireworks ever” and
Petipa’s Don Quixote, described by The Times as “still pretty
hard to resist”, in addition to a gala programme.
alt="The Kirov’s panache performance of Don Quixote">
You’ll have a spring in your step once you’ve seen The
Kirov’s dancers perform – and chances are they will inspire
you to visit them on home turf.
For more information and tickets call +44 (0)870 787
5793 or visit www.thelowry.com. To find out more
about The Kirov Ballet visit
www.kirov.com
A step through time
Words | Julie Alpine
In her new autobiography, celebrated ballerina Tamara Tchinarova Finch tells how her
life was marked as much by hardship and struggle as it was by applause and glamour
alt="Tamara with Peter Finch, wedding photograph, 1943">
Mention the late Vivien Leigh, who played
Scarlett O’Hara in Gone With The Wind, and
what comes to mind is Hollywood glamour.
But for octogenarian Tamara Tchinarova Finch,
former ballerina with the world-renowned Ballets Russes,
mention of the actress brings back painful memories. For
it was Leigh who, in 1953 – and despite being married to
Laurence Olivier at the time – initiated a relationship with
Tamara’s husband, the actor Peter Finch. When Leigh then
famously suffered a very public nervous breakdown, gossip
columnists implied it was as a result of the affair.
“What should I do?” Tamara recalls asking herself at
the time. “Announce their affair to the world? Make her
nervous breakdown worse? Could I do that to Olivier,
Peter’s benefactor?”
The scene may sound more like an episode of Dynasty
than a chapter in the life of a sensitive young ballerina,
but it was, unsurprisingly, a pivotal one in Tamara’s life,
as documented in her new autobiography.
Born to a Georgian father and an Armenian mother
in Romania, Tamara’s childhood combined both great
happiness and extreme poverty.
“I remember our home, especially the cellar, with holes
in the mud floor where the rats lodged,” she recounts.
The family moved to Paris in search of a better life.
Here, Tamara’s mother insisted that her political activist
husband avoided writing about provocative subjects, and
stick instead to ballet and the arts. Having heard glowing
reports about Serge Diaghilev and his famous Russian
ballet company, Ballets Russes, he took his daughter
along to a matinee performance of Chopiniana.
“I was transported into a dream world,” enthuses
Tamara. “I could not come back to earth from my elation.”
alt="In the title role of Thamar, Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo">
Russian émigré Olga Osipovna Preobrajenska was
chosen to be Tamara’s first ballet teacher. It was a
fortuitous decision. Tamara was soon spotted by a visiting
Russian named Orlitsky and recruited to perform with his
ballet company in Algiers and Morocco.
This marked the beginning of a career that took the
young ballerina on tour with the various Ballets Russes
companies that emerged in the 1930s after the death
of Diaghilev, under the direction of such luminaries as
George Balanchine. Politics had drawn her father to
Russia, so the young ballerina was accompanied by her
mother, who acted as shoemaker, seamstress and general
support. “Eat all you can, but not before class,” Tamara
recalls her mother warning. “Horse meat is cheap and
good. Beware of macaroons and buns – they are all right
for skinny girls, but not for short stocky ones.”
In 1936, Tamara made her longest voyage yet, travelling
to Australia with the Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo.
A second Australian tour followed in 1938, when she
danced with the Covent Garden Russian Ballet. This time
Tamara and her mother decided to stay.
It was here, at a small beach in Sydney, where Tamara
was to meet her future husband. Finch’s actor friends,
many of whom had seen the ballerina in action, raved
about her talent, and it wasn’t long before Finch wooed
the Romanian beauty with a copy of AA Milne’s Winnie
The Pooh, a book to help her with learning English.
The couple soon fell in love and after their wedding,
Tamara was back in the limelight. She is credited with
having made an important contribution in the 1940s to
newly developing Australian companies, which included the
Kirsova Ballet and the Polish-Australian Ballet, in addition
to the Borovansky Ballet. But
dancing became less of a full-time
occupation when the pair had a
daughter, Anita, in 1949.
Following a meeting with the
dynamic Laurence Olivier and
his wife Vivien Leigh, which led
to a new theatre role for Peter,
Finch moved his wife and
daughter to London. Tamara
remembers their first few weeks
in the UK as a dark, difficult time,
during which the three survived
mainly on whale meat. The play,
however, was a huge West End
success, and Olivier then cast
Peter in his film Elephant Walk,
to star opposite Leigh.
The affair that ensued
between Leigh and Finch is well
documented, as is the screen siren’s manic-depression,
which led to her being taken off the film for medical
treatment. The role ended up going to Elizabeth Taylor,
and Tamara and Peter went on to become regular guests
at Taylor’s home, mixing with the stars of the
day. But their marriage never recovered and the couple
divorced in 1959.
alt="In Les Présages, Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo">
For Tamara, other avenues opened. She started teaching
dance and became a Russian interpreter, which took her to
the British Trade Fair in Moscow and then on to working for
dance companies touring Russia – such as the Australian
Ballet – and the Russian ballet companies touring in the
West. This from the girl who had, not so many years before,
been reading Winnie The Pooh to improve her English.
Today, at the age of 88, Tamara seems content with the
story of her past.
“I now watch the sky, the trees, the changing seasons,
the expanse of the sea’s horizon, and I am grateful to be
still alive and to have had a full and interesting life with
wonderful, magical memories.”
Dancing Into The Unknown: My Life In The Ballets Russes
And Beyond by Tamara Tchinarova Finch is out now
(£18, Dance Books;
www.dancebooks.co.uk)
BALLETS RUSSES
Founded in 1909 by the Russian impresario
Serge Diaghilev, Ballets Russes was resident
first in the Théâtre Mogador and Théâtre du
Châtelet, Paris. It included luminaries such as
choreographers Michel Fokine and George
Balanchine, dancers Anna Pavlova and Vaslav
Nijinsky and composers Debussy, Ravel and
Stravinsky. Picasso and Coco Chanel contributed
set and costume designs. It revolutionised ballet
in Western Europe, exerting an influence that
can still be felt today. After Diaghilev’s death in
1929 the company was disbanded. It was later
reformed – in name only – as the Ballet Russes
de Monte Carlo and the Original Ballet Russes.
