Anna Pavlowa Describes the Russian Gavotte to the El Paso Herald – Lesson 2

Anna Pavlowa (also known as Anna Pavlova, or Anna Pavlovna) was a Russian prima ballerina during the late 19th and early 20th century.  She famously created the role of The Dying Swan, and, according to Wikipedia, is credited as the first ballerina to tour ballet around the world.

Ms. Pavlowa’s dance expertise appears to extend beyond the realm of ballet.  In 1913, Ms. Pavlowa created, or at least sanctioned, a number of articles which appeared in the El Paso Herald on the issue of social dance.  The sequence was called “The New Social Dances.”  The El Paso Herald describes the situation thusly:

“This is one of a series of articles especially written for the El Paso Herald by Mlle. Anna Pavlowa, the greatest living premiere danseuse, who has posed with her dancing partner, Lawrenti Novikoff, for each figure.  The dances to be explained and illustrated are those now in vogue in society ballrooms.”

In the article below, Ms. Pavlowa describes Lesson 2 of the Russian Gavotte – “The Full-Armed Salute and the Forward Flourish”:

El Paso herald., December 17, 1913, Sport and Classified Section, Page 12, Image 12El Paso herald., December 17, 1913, Sport and Classified Section, Page 12, Image 12.jpg

She again is pictured without her partner, this time in poses three and four of the Russian Gavotte.

The newspaper article was provided by Chronicling America.  The cover photo, depicting Ms. Pavlowa as “Pharaoh’s Daughter” in 1910, was provided by Wikimedia.  It is listed as in the public domain.  According to Wikimedia, the image is a “[p]hotographic postcard of Anna Pavlova as the Princess Aspicia in the Petipa/Pugni The Pharaoh’s Daughter, Saint Petersburg, circa 1910. Dancer Anna Pavlova performed her celebrated “Glow Worm Dance” in 1915.  The “Glow Worm Dance” was most likely the Gavotte.

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s