Alighting from the Air

Abstract Ballerina Tamara Karsavina (1885–1978) led an extraordinary life: she graduated from the Imperial Theatre School in the last years of the Romanov dynasty, became a celebrated principal dancer at the Maryinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg, assumed a leading role in Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, and was particularly noted as a significant interpreter of Michel Fokine’s choreographic innovations. In 1930, she published her popular memoir, Theatre Street, which described her remarkable rise through the ranks of the Imperial Russian Ballet, her first years in the Ballets Russes, and her dramatic escape from revolutionary Russia to find a new life in England. Alighting from the Air weaves together the narrative of Karsavina’s life with analyses of her substantial writings and seeks to foreground her often-overlooked development as an intellectual. Alighting from the Air draws from Karsavina’s many published and unpublished writings, to better understand how her life experiences and training contributed to the development of her aesthetic credo. Examinations of her interdependent roles as performer, teacher, and coach illuminate the histories of the early and mid-twentieth-century dance and art movements in which she was a key figure.