Theatre Street: the Reminiscences of Tamara Karsavina

By Tamara Karsavina

Book Overview

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it.This work is in the public domain in the United States of America,... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0862879272
• ISBN13: 9780862879273
• Release Date: August 1988
• Publisher: Virgin Books
• Length: 302 Pages
• Weight: 0.15 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Enchanting

An absolutely enchanting book, encompassing so much. A funny and lyrical story of a farouche young girl who grows into a great artist. An intimate and fascinating portrait of Russian life before and after the Revolution. And for the lover of ballet history, a treasure: first-hand accounts of training in the Imperial Ballet School, the Maryinsky theater in the time of the Tsars, the early years of the Ballets Russes. She was in the center of one of the most volatile and important periods of art, and she reminisces of her collaborations with Diaghliev, Chaliapin, Nijinsky, Stravinsky, Cocteau, Picasso, Bakst, and many more.

Old St. Petersburg revisited

Tamara Karsavina (1885-1978) starts by telling us of her childhood in pre-revolution Russia, in turn of the century St. Petersburg. Her father was also a dancer, Platon Karsavin, and the account of her childhood gives us a rare insight in middle class life of that epoch. There is a detailed description of life in the boarding school and the Imperial ballet. She writes with great tenderness about life at school and about one of the teachers, Christian Petrovich Johansson. In those days he was already in his nineties, a Swede who had turned grumpier with the years, but was one of the greatest teachers in the history of the school. It is with great pride and joy I read that she attributed so much to my compatriot! During the revolution and its aftermath, Karsavina remained in Russia till the bitter end. Then, she too, with her English-born husband and small son, decided to leave. The family escaped through the North of Russia on an English vessel - the famous ballerina and her husband on the crew list as stewardess and purser respectively. Safety was at last in sight in England where they made their home. The last sentence of her account is beautiful: "That night we arrived in Middlesbrough - The Maryinski and Theatre Street left behind for ever, these were the footlights of a new world". Anyone who has ever been to grimy Middlesbrough can only compare with the glitter of old St. Petersburg. The book was originally published in 1930; in the revised edition of 1981 there is an added chapter on Diaghilev which Karsavina wrote in 1947. This beautiful volume with its evocative illustra- tions would really merit 10 stars, but as five is the highest accolade, I have to limit myself. Maybe the finest dance biography written this century.