Throwback Thursday and Avdotia Ilyinichna Istomina
An obscure ballerina in dance history is
the Russian ballerina Avdotia
Ilyinichna Istomina . She
was born on January 6, 1799 and became one of the most famous dancers of the
1800s. But she is all but unknown today.
She studied ballet under Charles
Didelot, and first appeared onstage at age nine. She made her debut in the
Imperial Russian Ballet in 1815. One source http://www.wild-mistress.ru/wm/wm.nsf/publicall/2011-05-17-1721391.html
says she was the first to perform on
pointe. She apparently inspired an almost obsessive love in her famous and wealthy
followers, and it is said men were killed dueling over her. According to https://www.clydefitchreport.com/2014/03/ballet-history-cray-cray/
: “… Alexander Pushkin was so infatuated with the Russian ballerina Avdotia Istomina that he
wrote her into Eugene Onegin and doodled
pictures of her impossibly tapered feet amidst flying swans.”
She was in the Imperial Ballet for
twenty years, but then the political climate changed, and she danced less and
less, gradually fading from dancing into acting and finally disappearing from
the public eye altogether. She danced for the last time on January 30, 1836.
She died of cholera on June 26, 1848,
and her tombstone reads:"Avdotya
Ilyinichna Ekunina, a retired artist."
From the Big
Blue Book of Ballet Secrets
Ballet Secret #310:
“Avdotia
Ilyinichna Istomina is little known early Russian ballerina.”
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