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SHE WAS AN EXOTIC BALLERINA AND TEACHERSHE WAS AN EXOTIC BALLERINA AND TEACHERSHE WAS AN EXOTIC BALLERINA AND TEACHERSHE WAS AN EXOTIC BALLERINA AND TEACHER Prepared by John Horsefield, Cowra U3A

Nina was an exotic and pivotal figure in the creative resurrection of French

ballet after World War II and a well-known teacher after her retirement.

Nina Vyroubova was one of the

finest prima ballerinas of the last century,

renowned for her ability to fit into almost

any style and yet bring to it her own dis-

tinctive personality. Known for her airy

lightness, lyricism and romanticism, she

was also a gifted comedian.

She had equal success in illuminat-

ing the great classic roles and in taking

part in creating new ballets. France

adopted her and rightly boasts of her, but

she was Russian by origin.

Nina was born on June 4, 1921 in

the Crimean resort town of Gurzuf (now

in the Ukraine). She was taken as a child

aged three to Paris by her grandmother

and her widowed mother, herself a former

dancer. They lived in Meudon on the out-

skirts of Paris. She was not notably pretty

but had a very apt physique and a radiant

personality.

Her early life was poor, but Nina

was brought up in a circle that included

several of the Tsar's leading ballerinas,

who made the city a rich repository for the

grand Imperial ballet style lost to Russia

itself. She was inspired to dance after see-

ing Pavlova perform at the Théâtre des

Champs-Elysées in 1931.

She studied dance with her mother

and with Vera Trefilova, Olga Preobrajen-

ska, Lubov Egorova, Yves Brieux, and

later Victor Gsovsky and Serge Lifar.

From them she learned not only the pure

classicism of the Russian school but also

its ‘soul’, the depth of feeling that would

illumine so many roles.

Much later, she attended the

classes of Boris Kniaseff, who would later

become the father of her son Yura. Nina

made her professional debut at age 16 in

Nina not only signed this card showing

her as Odile in Swan Lake, but she also

wrote on the back (below).

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the leading role of Swanilda in Coppelia

at Caen in 1937.

Appearances followed in a couple

of small companies as she had to help to

support the family’s modest income. She

danced with the Ballets Polonais (1939),

the Ballet Russe de Paris (1940) and as a

soloist in recitals (1941-44), including at

the famous Vendredis de la Danse at the

Sarah Bernhardt Theatre, where she met

Roland Petit, then a dancer and promising

choreographer.

The Parisian arts activist Irene Li-

dova produced a series of historic small

concerts from 1941 to 1944 in Paris that

introduced unknowns to the world of bal-

let. She arranged performance evenings

for rising talents, and prophetically paired

Nina with the young Petit. He had been

unimpressed by Nina in Russian character

dances but was overcome when she per-

formed a lyrical solo in White Tarlatan to

Chopin music.

He took his new partner with him

when he launched his groundbreaking

company, Les Ballets des Champs-

Elysées, in 1945. Nina Vyroubova's frag-

ile Russian beauty and infectious person-

ality, together with Petit's modern, crea-

tive approach, captivated post-war Paris.

When Petit formed the company, his sig-

nature piece, Les Forains, featured Nina

as the heroine among wistful strolling

players.

Petit’s new works—creative col-

laborations with major poets, composers

and designers—caused a sensation. But in

an about-face the next year, the company

presented a new version of La Sylphide, a

19th

-century ballet that had not been seen

in Paris for decades. Boris Kochno, for-

mer assistant to Diaghilev and author of

several ballets, was the company’s artistic

director and decided that in Vyroubova he

had at last found the ballerina with whom

he could realise a long-held wish to re-

stage the illustrious romantic masterpiece

La Sylphide.

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Nina in La Sylphide

With Helene Sadovska in La Sylphide

With Roland Petit in La Sylphide

Victor Gsovsky created new choreography

set to the original 1832 score of the early

Taglioni ballet tailored to highlight her

unusual Romantic aura. Petit danced the

male lead, but the triumph was Nina's. Her

fragile Russian beauty and infectious per-

sonality, together with Petit's modern,

creative approach, captivated post-war

Paris. She achieved instant stardom as a

Romantic ballerina.

When it was brought to London

the following year Vyroubova was at first

prevented by illness from performing. The

production was liked even with a substi-

tute cast, but Vyroubova’s special quality

was confirmed when, bravely returning to

the stage sooner than advised, she arrived

in time to dance, overwhelmingly and

memorably, the final night. Her success

arose not only from her exceptionally

light, pure technique but her characterisa-

tion too, with a unique look mixing sur-

prise and reproach on realising that she

had been betrayed.

The young company's glamour and

vitality impressed Margot Fonteyn when

they visited London in 1946, inspiring her

own trip to Paris and a brief affair with

Petit. In 1949, after the London triumph,

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With Serge Lifar in Snow White.

Nina followed Petit to his new Ballets de

Paris. She was then invited to join the

Paris Opera Ballet by its director, Serge

Lifar.

She was an outsider when she

joined the Paris Opera Ballet in 1949 as an

étoile—or principal, the top rank—

replacing the illustrious Yvette Chauviré.

But Nina triumphed over a patchwork ca-

reer to achieve international status.

Among the established roles that she took

over, both Giselle (another celebrated old

classic) and the Shadow in Les Mirages

had been closely associated with the

longer-established star Chauvire, and it

was remarkable that the younger dancer’s

very personal interpretation of those roles

was equally admired.

She continued to dance Romantic

ballets like Giselle (1950), but she also

excelled in contemporary ballets and ap-

peared in many Lifar ballets, including the

part of La Dame in Dramma per Musica

(1950).

Watching Nina in Paris in 1950,

the American critic Edwin Denby be-

lieved she could be Europe's next great

ballerina after Fonteyn if only she were to

join Sadler's Wells Ballet for a final artis-

tic polish. He praised her ‘long foot, quick

thigh, delicate bust, small head far from

the shoulder... She is a darling, but she

should turn into a marvel.’

Nina remained in Paris, as the new

leading ballerina at Paris Opera Ballet,

directed by Serge Lifar, the last of

Diaghilev's Ballets Russes stars. Over the

next seven years her fame and artistry

grew as Lifar created and commissioned

ballets for her, from the glamorous wicked

Queen in his Blanche-Neige (Snow

White), 1951, to the chic Cigarette Dance

in his La Suite en Blanc, with which she

conquered London on the company's visit

to Covent Garden in 1954. Her solo in La

Suite en Blanc was a climax to the open-

ing programme, as later was the solo he

had made especially for her in Variations.

Those were pure classical ballets,

but equally impressive was her dramatic

quality as Phaedre, a role that had been

shaped for Tamara Toumanova, and the

way she glittered in the title role of The

Firebird even though English audiences

did not like Lifar’s new choreography for

this, especially coming soon after the

Royal Ballet’s production of the version

by Fokine for which Stravinsky had writ-

ten his music.

Other starring roles at the Opera

included some that Lifar made for her in

highly contrasting moods. She played op-

posite him in a dance version of Molière’s

Italianate comedy Les Fourberies de

Scapin. Another was Les Noces Fan-

tastiques (1955), a mix of fantasy and re-

ality in which the ballerina was acclaimed

for her emotional portrayal of a fiancée

united with her sailor sweetheart in death.

Nina also starred in Lifar’s Hamlet

(1957) and L'Amour et son Destin (1957)

as well as Ana Ricarda's Chanson de l'é-

ternelle Tristesse (1957). She continued

also to dance classics, acclaimed as

among the loveliest of Giselles. ‘She is

one of the most accomplished artists of

her generation’, the French critic Irène

Lidova wrote in 1957.

When Lifar was replaced as artis-

tic director of the Paris Opera Ballet in

1958 by George Skibine, the latter

brought his American ballerina wife

Marjorie Tallchief with him. When Lifar

left Nina went with him to the Grand Bal-

let du Marquis de Cuevas, the last of the

private, personally financed, touring ballet

companies, where she continued to dance

from 1957 to 1962.

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Nina with Nicholas Palajenko in Inez de

Castro, Barcelona, c1958-9.

Nina with Palajenko and Lifar after danc-

ing Swan Lake and La Sylphide, Paris,

c1960-61

Nina sitting on the arms of Nicholas Pala-

jenko and George Goviloff c1958-9.

At the de Cuevas Ballet she tri-

umphed with a touching account of the

Sleepwalker in Balanchine's Sonnambule

and alternated as Arura and the Lilac

Fairy in de Larrain's production of The

Sleeping Beauty. She also had the title part

made for her by Serge Golovine in La

Mort de Narcisse.

When Russia's most explosive

young talent Rudolf Nureyev defected in

June 1961, during the Kirov Ballet's long-

awaited Western debut, he was quickly

engaged by a Venezuelan marquis, who

ran a starry private company in Paris, to

dance Prince Desiré and partner Nina in

The Sleeping Beauty at the Champs-

Elysées Theatre a week later.

Appearing before a packed audi-

ence of noisy fans, photographers, Com-

munist agitators and police, Nureyev em-

bellished his final solo with some spec-

tacular extra steps not in the original text.

Vyroubova was outraged, and berated him

behind the curtains for unprofessionalism

and scene-stealing. They had a furious

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Nina with Nureyev in Sleeping Beauty,

Paris, June 24, 1961.

row at the curtain call which sparked ani-

mosity that lasted for five years.

But although she refused to speak

to him for five years, she did not let it

cloud her judgment. After his visit to

London later that year to dance with

Margot Fonteyn for the first time, Nina

conceded that Nureyev was becoming

more ‘princely’.

Little known in the USA, Nina’s

only US appearances were as a guest artist

with the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo in

its final season, 1961-62. After the Cuevas

company disbanded in 1962, Nina pursued

a freelance career as ballerina.

When in her forties, she was in-

vited to Hamburg Ballet where Peter Van

Dyk (another Kniaseff pupil) created a

role in Abraxas (1965) for her. She also

toured with other groups, including Ballet

de Pâques, directed by Balanchine’s long-

time associate, John Taras.

A highly successful career as a

teacher followed, at her own studio and in

Paris, including the Paris Opera Ballet,

Nina in 1962

Nina with Boris Kniaseff and her son

Youra, November 19, 1966.

and later taught at the Troyes Conserva-

tory in France from 1983 to 1988.

She continued to serve on the ju-

ries of important international ballet com-

petitions until ill health shadowed her fi-

nal years. The appearance of this slim,

white-haired, ever elegant figure was al-

ways given an ovation. Reaching her 86th

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birthday three weeks before, Nina Vy-

roubova died on June 24, 2007 of un-

known causes.

She was married three times and

had a son, Youra Kniazeff, also a dancer.

Irene Lidova wrote: ‘Those who knew

[Nina's] years of glory class her among

the greatest ballerinas of our time.’

Happily, her dancing can be seen

in several films, including three documen-

tary films were made of her by Dominique

Delouche, Le Spectre de la Danse (1960),

L'Adage (1965), and Les Cahiers Retrou-

vés de Nina Vyroubova (1996).

In addition to roles previously

mentioned, Nina Vyroubova created the

following roles: Petit's Ballet blanc

(1944), Le Rossignol et la rose (1944), Un

American à Paris (1944), Treize danses

(1947), and L'œuf à la coque (1949); ); in

Lifar's The Firebird (title role, 1954), and

Apollon musagète (1956). She appeared in

the films Le Calvaire de Cimiez and Le

Spectre de la Danse (1986).