Irina Baronova
Encyclopedia
Irina Mikhailovna Baronova , FRAD
Royal Academy of Dance
The Royal Academy of Dance is an international dance education and training organization, and examination board that specialises in the teaching and technique of Ballet. The RAD was established in London, England in 1920 as the Association of Operatic Dancing of Great Britain, and received its...

 (March 13, 1919June 28, 2008) was a Russian ballerina
Ballerina
A ballerina is a title used to describe a principal female professional ballet dancer in a large company; the male equivalent to this title is danseur or ballerino...

 who was one of the Baby Ballerinas
Baby Ballerinas
The Baby Ballerinas were three young principal dancers of the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo in the 1930s. They were Irina Baronova, Tatiana Riabouchinska and Tamara Toumanova....

 of the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo
Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo
Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo was a ballet company created by members of the Ballets Russes de Monte-Carlo in 1938 after Léonide Massine and René Blum had a falling-out with the co-founder Wassily de Basil...

, discovered by George Balanchine
George Balanchine
George Balanchine , born Giorgi Balanchivadze in Saint Petersburg, Russia, to a Georgian father and a Russian mother, was one of the 20th century's most famous choreographers, a developer of ballet in the United States, co-founder and balletmaster of New York City Ballet...

 in Paris in the 1930s. She created roles in Léonide Massine's Le Beau Danube (1924), Jeux d'enfants (1932), and Les Présages (1933); and in Bronislava Nijinska
Bronislava Nijinska
Bronislava Nijinska - February 22, 1972)) was a Russian dancer, choreographer, and teacher of Polish descent.Nijinska was born in Minsk, the third child of the Polish dancers Tomasz and Eleonora Nijinska . Her brother was Vaslav Nijinsky...

's Les Cent Baisers (1935).

Biography

Baronova was born in Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg is a city and a federal subject of Russia located on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea...

 (then known as Petrograd) in 1919, the daughter of a lieutenant in the Imperial Navy, Mikhail Baronov, and his wife Lidia (née
Married and maiden names
A married name is the family name adopted by a person upon marriage. When a person assumes the family name of her spouse, the new name replaces the maiden name....

 Vishniakova). When she was less than two years old, her family moved to Romania. She became entranced with ballet
Ballet
Ballet is a type of performance dance, that originated in the Italian Renaissance courts of the 15th century, and which was further developed in France and Russia as a concert dance form. The early portions preceded the invention of the proscenium stage and were presented in large chambers with...

 when she saw a performance by Tamara Karsavina
Tamara Karsavina
Tamara Platonovna Karsavina was a famous Russian ballerina, renowned for her beauty, who was most noted as a Principal Artist of the Imperial Russian Ballet and later the Ballets Russes of Serge Diaghilev...

. The family moved to Paris in 1928 to provide Irina with professional training, where she was taught by Olga Preobrajenska
Olga Preobrajenska
Olga Iosifovna Preobrajenska was probably the best loved ballerina of the Russian Imperial Ballet....

. She also studied with fellow prima ballerina Mathilde Kschessinska
Mathilde Kschessinska
Mathilda-Marie Feliksovna Kschessinskaya She was known in the West as Mathilde Kschessinska or Matilda Kshesinskaya.- Life :Kschessinska was born at Ligovo, near Peterhof. Like all her Polish family, to whom she was known as Matylda Krzesińska, Mathilde performed at the Imperial Mariinsky Theatre...

.

Baronova made her debut aged 11 at the Paris Opera
Paris Opera Ballet
The Paris Opera Ballet is the oldest national ballet company in the world, and many European and international ballet companies can trace their origins to it...

 in 1930, and in 1932 George Balanchine took her into the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo. The writer Arnold Haskell
Arnold Haskell
Arnold Lionel Haskell was a British dance critic who founded the Camargo Society in 1930. With Ninette de Valois, he was influential in the development of the Royal Ballet School, later becoming the school's headmaster.He became fascinated by ballet when his mother prevailed on him to come with...

 dubbed the trio of Baronova, Tamara Toumanova
Tamara Toumanova
Tamara Toumanova was an American ballerina and actress. "Toumanova" was a stage name proposed by Olga Preobrazhenskaya, after her mother’s family name of Tumanishvili.-Personal life:...

 and Tatiana Riabouchinska
Tatiana Riabouchinska
Tatiana Mikhaylovna Riabouchinska was a Russian-born prima ballerina.She was born in Moscow in 1917. She was trained by the great Mathilde Kschessinska, and was later a prima ballerina in France. Together with Irina Baronova and Tamara Toumanova she was the third of Colonel W. de Basil's "baby...

 the "Baby Ballerinas
Baby Ballerinas
The Baby Ballerinas were three young principal dancers of the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo in the 1930s. They were Irina Baronova, Tatiana Riabouchinska and Tamara Toumanova....

". She danced Odette in Swan Lake
Swan Lake
Swan Lake ballet, op. 20, by Pyotr Tchaikovsky, composed 1875–1876. The scenario, initially in four acts, was fashioned from Russian folk tales and tells the story of Odette, a princess turned into a swan by an evil sorcerer's curse. The choreographer of the original production was Julius Reisinger...

at age 14, partnered by Anton Dolin
Anton Dolin
Sir Anton Dolin was an English ballet dancer and choreographer.Dolin was born in Slinfold in Sussex as Sydney Francis Patrick Chippendall Healey-Kay but was generally known as Patrick Kay. He joined Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes in 1921, was a principal there from 1924, and was a principal...

. At age 17 she eloped with an older Russian, German (Jerry or Gerry) Sevastianov. They had a church wedding in Sydney
Sydney
Sydney is the most populous city in Australia and the state capital of New South Wales. Sydney is located on Australia's south-east coast of the Tasman Sea. As of June 2010, the greater metropolitan area had an approximate population of 4.6 million people...

, Australia, two years later, when she was on tour. She joined the Ballet Theatre in the USA, under the patronage of Sol Hurok
Sol Hurok
Sol Hurok was a world-famous 20th century American impresario.-Biography:...

. Her marriage to Sevastianov ended in divorce, and in Britain in 1946 she met the agent Cecil Tennant, who asked her to marry him if she would give up ballet. Aged only 27, she agreed, and retired.

Between 1940 and 1951, Baronova appeared in several films, including Ealing Studios
Ealing Studios
Ealing Studios is a television and film production company and facilities provider at Ealing Green in West London. Will Barker bought the White Lodge on Ealing Green in 1902 as a base for film making, and films have been made on the site ever since...

 Train of Events
Train of Events
Train of Events is a 1949 British film made by Ealing Studios directed by Sidney Cole, Charles Crichton and Basil Dearden.A portmanteau work, it tells the various stories of the passengers who are on a train which crashes into a stalled petrol tanker at a level crossing.-Plot:The film opens with a...

(1949) and worked as ballet mistress
Ballet Master
Ballet Master is the term used for an employee of a ballet company who is responsible for the level of competence of the dancers in their company...

 for the 1980 film Nijinsky
Nijinsky (film)
Nijinsky is a 1980 American biographical film directed by Herbert Ross. Hugh Wheeler, whose screenplay centers on the later life and career of Vaslav Nijinsky, used the legendary dancer's personal diaries and his wife's 1933 book Life of Nijinsky as his primary source materials.-Synopsis:The film...

.

Baronova and Tennant had three children, Victoria
Victoria Tennant
Victoria Tennant is an English film and television actress.-Early life:Tennant was born in London, England. Her mother, Irina Baronova, was a Russian prima ballerina who appeared with the Ballet Russes de Monte Carlo, and her father, Cecil Tennant, was an English producer and talent agent who ran...

, Irina and Robert. Through Victoria, she became the mother-in-law of Steve Martin
Steve Martin
Stephen Glenn "Steve" Martin is an American actor, comedian, writer, playwright, producer, musician and composer....

. In 1967, Cecil Tennant was killed in a car accident, and Baronova moved to Switzerland. Later, she resumed her relationship with her first husband, Jerry Sevastianov, who died in 1974. She returned to teaching master classes in the United States and United Kingdom in 1976. Margot Fonteyn
Margot Fonteyn
Dame Margot Fonteyn de Arias, DBE , was an English ballerina of the 20th century. She is widely regarded as one of the greatest classical ballet dancers of all time...

 asked her to conduct a training course for teachers. In 1986 she staged Fokine
Michel Fokine
Michel Fokine was a groundbreaking Russian choreographer and dancer.-Biography:...

's Les Sylphides
Les Sylphides
Les Sylphides is a short, non-narrative ballet blanc. Its original choreography was by Michel Fokine, with music by Frédéric Chopin orchestrated by Alexander Glazunov. Glazunov had already set some of the music in 1892 as a purely orchestral suite, under the title Chopiniana, Op. 46...

for The Australian Ballet. In 1992 she returned to Russia to help the Mariinsky Theatre
Mariinsky Theatre
The Mariinsky Theatre is a historic theatre of opera and ballet in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Opened in 1860, it became the preeminent music theatre of late 19th century Russia, where many of the stage masterpieces of Tchaikovsky, Mussorgsky, and Rimsky-Korsakov received their premieres. The...

 with an archival project. In 1996 she received a Nijinsky Medal from Poland and an honorary doctorate from the North Carolina School of the Arts
North Carolina School of the Arts
The University of North Carolina School of the Arts , formerly the North Carolina School of the Arts, is a public coeducational arts conservatory in Winston-Salem, North Carolina that grants high school, undergraduate and graduate degrees. It is one of the seventeen constituent campuses of the...

.

Baronova's daughter Irina moved to Byron Bay
Byron Bay, New South Wales
Byron Bay is a beachside town located in the far-northeastern corner of the state of New South Wales, Australia. It is located north of Sydney and south of Brisbane. Cape Byron, a headland adjacent to the town, is the easternmost point of mainland Australia. At the 2006 Census, the town had a...

, Australia, and, after visiting her in 2000, Baronova decided to settle there as well. Baronova appeared in the 2005 documentary Ballets Russes
Ballets Russes (documentary)
Ballets Russes is a 2005 feature documentary about the dancers of the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo. It was directed by Dayna Goldfine and Dan Geller, and featured Irina Baronova, Alicia Markova, George Zoritch, and Tatiana Riabouchinska, among others. It was narrated by Marian Seldes...

. In the same year she published her autobiography, Irina: Ballet, Life and Love, which she wrote in longhand despite having lost much of her sight.

Baronova was a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Dance
Royal Academy of Dance
The Royal Academy of Dance is an international dance education and training organization, and examination board that specialises in the teaching and technique of Ballet. The RAD was established in London, England in 1920 as the Association of Operatic Dancing of Great Britain, and received its...

 (FRAD) and its vice-president; she was also a patron of the Australian Ballet School
Australian Ballet School
The Australian Ballet School was founded in 1964 as the primary training facility for The Australian Ballet by Dame Margaret Scott. It is part of the Australian Ballet Centre, which is located in the Melbourne Arts Precinct, Southbank in Melbourne, Victoria...

.

Only five weeks before her death, she spoke at a symposium in Adelaide, South Australia, on the Ballets Russes tours of Australia. She died in Byron Bay on June 28, 2008, aged 89, survived by her children.

Literature

  • Irina: Ballet, Life and Love Autobiography, 2005, Penguin/Viking, ISBN 978-0-6700-2848-1, University Press of Florida ISBN 978-0-8130-3026-5
  • Lister, Raymond
    Raymond Lister
    Raymond Lister was an English blacksmith/ironworker, author, artist and the leading authority on Samuel Palmer. He was born and spent most of his life in Cambridge...

     (1983) There was a star danced... Linton, Cambridge (A limited edition art work on Baronova)

External links

  • Obituary, The Daily Telegraph
    The Daily Telegraph
    The Daily Telegraph is a daily morning broadsheet newspaper distributed throughout the United Kingdom and internationally. The newspaper was founded by Arthur B...

    (1 July 2008)
  • Obituary at NEWSru
    Newsru
    NEWSru is one of the Russian online news sites. Originally it functioned as NTV's website under the address ntv.ru. The site remains part of Vladimir Gusinsky's media holding that includes a satellite TV broadcast company RTVi....

     (3 July 2008)
  • Australia Dancing – The Prodigal Son
  • Australia Dancing – Baronova, Irina (1919–2008)
  • Irina Baronova Gallery at the National Library of Australia
    National Library of Australia
    The National Library of Australia is the largest reference library of Australia, responsible under the terms of the National Library Act for "maintaining and developing a national collection of library material, including a comprehensive collection of library material relating to Australia and the...

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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