Russian ballerina Tamara Karsavina (1885-1978) has an extraordinary life story: trained at the elite Imperial Ballet School before fleeing Revolutionary Russia and starting a new life in England. She became an international celebrity, writer, and intellectual. Although she was celebrated as a dancer, her teaching and pedagogical contributions have been overlooked. Drawing from Karsavina's extensive published and unpublished writings, Alighting from the Air illuminates the experiences that shaped her aesthetic credo and weaves together the narrative of Karsavina's life with analyses of her writings and development as an intellectual and an artist aware of the classical and modern arts movements of her time.
Tamara Karsavina (1885-1978) was known as a renowned ballerina, writer, and intellectual. Drawing from Karsavina's many published and unpublished writings, Alighting from the Air demonstrates how her experiences and training contributed to the development of her aesthetic credo. She became a celebrated principal dancer at the Maryinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg, assumed a leading role in Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, and was noted for embodying Michel Fokine's choreographic innovations. In 1930, she published her popular memoir, Theatre Street, describing her rise through the ranks of the Imperial Russian ballet and escape with her British husband and son from revolutionary Russia to England. Her substantial record of publication includes articles devoted to aspects of classical ballet technique, and decades of essays, published mostly in Dancing Times. These wide-ranging articles document not only her performance experience with the Ballets Russes and in her own tours but ballet pedagogy and history more generally. Her work also analyzes ballet choreographies and reflects on classical ballets and steps or expressive elements that she feared were lost in contemporary productions. Alighting from the Air weaves together the narrative of Karsavina's life with analyses of her writings to foreground her development as an intellectual and an artist aware of, and sensitive to, the classical and modern arts movements of her time.
Introduction
1: Family Influences and Beyond 1885-1902
2: Two Cities, Two Theatres, 1902-1909
Interpolation: Dancer as Writer
3: "La Karsavina," in Paris, London, St. Petersburg, 1909-1918
4: Torn Between the Stage and Home, 1919-1925
Interpolation: Art, Media, and Objets D'art
5: The World Turned Upside Down, 1926-1940
Interpolation: Emigré Experiences
Interpolation: Karsavina on Choreography
6: Alighting, An Epilogue, 1940-1978
Appendix: A Listing of Writings by Tamara Karsavina
Karen Eliot is Professor Emerita and member of the Emeritus Academy at The Ohio State University. Prior to teaching at OSU, Eliot danced in the Merce Cunningham Dance Company. Awards include the Ronald and Deborah Ratner Award for Distinguished Teaching (2019) and OSU's Alumni Award for Distinguished Teaching (2016). Her books include Albion's Dance: The British Ballet during the Second World War (2016); Dancing Lives: Five Female Dancers from the Ballet d'Action to Merce Cunningham (2007); and with coeditor Melanie Bales, Dance on Its Own Terms: Histories and Methodologies (2013).
