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| Samuel Joshua Beckett Loїe Fuller Dancing ca. 1900 gelatin silver print Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| Samuel Joshua Beckett Loїe Fuller Dancing ca. 1900 gelatin silver print Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| Baron Adolf de Meyer Tamara Karsavina ca. 1908 autochrome Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
Tamara Karsavina (1885-1978) – Anglo-Russian ballerina whose partnership with Vaslav Nijinsky in Michel Fokine's avant-garde ballets helped to revive interest in ballet in western Europe. The daughter of a famous dancer, Platon Karsavin, she was educated at the Imperial Ballet School, St Petersburg under such teachers as Cecchetti, Christian Johansson and Paul Gerdt, graduating in 1902. As ballerina at the Mariinsky Theatre she included in her repertoire Giselle and Odette-Odile in Swan Lake. Karsavina is best known as the leading ballerina of Serge Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, from its beginnings in 1909 until 1922. Between 1909 and 1914 (paired with Nijinsky until 1913) she created the majority of famous roles in the company's Neo-Romantic repertoire, including Les Sylphides, Le Spectre de la Rose, Carnaval, Firebird, Petrushka, and Thamar. After marrying English diplomat Henry James Bruce, Karsavina settled permanently in London (1918), where she helped found the Royal Academy of Dancing (1920).
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| Baron Adolf de Meyer Dance Study ca. 1912 platinum print Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| Arnold Genthe Anna Pavlova ca. 1915 gelatin silver print Getty Museum, Los Angeles |
Anna Pavlova (1881-1931) – Russian ballerina, the most celebrated dancer of her time. Pavlova studied at the Imperial School of Ballet at the Mariinsky Theatre from 1891, joined the company in 1899, and became a prima ballerina in 1906. In 1909 she went to Paris on the historic tour of the Ballets Russes. After 1913 she danced independently with her own company throughout the world.
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| Arthur F. Kales Dancing Nymph ca. 1917 platinum print Getty Museum, Los Angeles |
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| Lady Ottoline Morrell Cavorting by the Pool at Garsington ca. 1916 gelatin silver print Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| Lady Ottoline Morrell Cavorting by the Pool at Garsington ca. 1916 gelatin silver print Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
Lady Ottoline Morrell, née Cavendish-Bentinck (1873-1938) – hostess and patron of the arts who brought together some of the most important writers and artists of her day. The daughter of a general, she broke with her conventionally upper class background as she formed her circle of artists and intellectuals, which included D.H. Lawrence, Virginia Woolf, Aldous Huxley, Bertrand Russell, and Augustus John. She and her husband, Philip Morrell, Liberal member of Parliament, lived in London and at Garsington Manor, Oxfordshire, which became a refuge for conscientious objectors during World War I.
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| August Sander Showman with Dancing Bear in Cologne 1923 gelatin silver print Tate Gallery |
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| Yva (Else Simon) Tanzbar ca. 1930 gelatin silver print Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| Yva (Else Simon) Dance ca. 1933 photogravure private collection |
Yva (professional name of Else Simon, 1900-1942) – commercial photographer in Berlin, specializing in fashion and portrait work. Yva's career was cut short under Nazi rule. A Jew, she was forced to give up management of her studio in 1936. After 1938, no longer allowed to work as a photographer, she became an X-ray technician. She died in a concentration camp in 1942.
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| Harold F. Kells Soul of the Dance 1933 gelatin silver print National Gallery of Canada |
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| George Platt Lynes Tanaquil Le Clercq and Jerome Robbins in Bourée Fantastique 1949 gelatin silver print Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
Tanaquil Le Clercq (1929-2000) – versatile American ballet dancer, remembered largely for her work in association with George Balanchine, to whom she was married from 1952 to 1969. Le Clercq grew up in New York City and began taking ballet lessons at age four. In 1941 she entered the School of American Ballet, where she studied under Balanchine. In 1946 she became an original member of the Ballet Society formed by Balanchine and Lincoln Kirstein, and remained a principal dancer when the company became the New York City Ballet in 1948. During a European tour with NYCB in 1956 she was stricken with polio, which abruptly ended her dancing career.
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| George Platt Lynes Diana Adams in La Valse 1951 gelatin silver print Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |