Creative Person; 49; Anna Pavlova

The creative person has a special gift his private vision of the world through words ideas images he touches our view of the 20th century Dance is the most elusive of all the performing arts It lives only as long as the dancer is on stage What remains when the lights are dimmed are paintings, photographs, bits of film, memories The image of a swan, these are the precious fragments that make up the legend of Anapabala The swan, the most graceful of all creatures on the water, ungainly out of it But Anapabala, who first performed the dyeing swan when she was 24, and for almost a quarter of a century afterwards, was as graceful off stage as she was on

Though she died in 1931, her name has a special, indefinable meaning, even for audiences that never saw her Avenews were named for her, her carriage was pulled through the streets by adoring audiences She presented command performances before royalty, whose names have been forgotten Today's Malarinas wear a slipper called the Pavlava The reasons? One man who knew her tries to define them What Anapabala had, and what I'd expect, what I would like to have from every great artist that she had Anapabala not only was a great artist, one of the greatest dancers of all times in my life then She had so much personality, so much charm, so much projection, and in the intelligence she was

And the whole thing, and she was, there was a lot of it to call electricity Saul Uraq has devoted half a century to guiding the careers of many of the world's great performers in the concert field In 1920, Anapabala came under his management for the first time Mr. Uraq remembers when he first saw her dance at the New York Capodrome I was there one evening, and I was saying in the back watching the performance I'm dealing with asking him, you're welcome, if you want to go backstage, say hello to the great lady The planted in my soul, that one day I should manage Anapabala The second leading ballerina in the Pabla of a company, Madame Hilda Bootsava, also has a special insight into the legend She was never, she was never Pabla over dancing this one, she was never Pabla over being the dragonfly or Amrilla

She was the dragonfly, she was the swan, and you just saw this image of whatever she was dancing How did this legend come about? Why this woman, and not another, perhaps as gifted and as dedicated? First there was circumstance, Pabla was born not to wealth and position, but at the perfect time and place in the history of ballet Her birthplace was St. Petersburg, the capital city of Russia designed by Peter the Great, specifically to become one of the world's most brilliant cultural centers In the late 19th century, the jewel of its culture was the Marinsky Theatre and its Imperial Ballet School There the choreographer Marius Petipov and the composer Chakkovsky were creating a Renaissance in ballet with works like Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty and the Nutcracker Suite Petipov believed that he could create a unity out of a rigorously trained Cord Ballet

For that core he needed a school, the Marinsky Imperial Ballet School There Hannah Pabla began her studies at the age of ten She and the other students became Petipov's tools for the creation of new works for the ballet Renaissance A fellow student described the young Pabla She was a very thin girl, slightly above average height, beautiful eyes that were a little sad Her legs were long with an extraordinarily arched instant Her whole body was graceful, delicate, as if she were trying to leave the earth By 195, before her 24th birthday, Hannah Pabla was officially promoted to the rank of Ballerina with the Imperial Ballet She performed leading roles in over 20 Ballets, varied all, magic flute and Don Quixote among them And of course, Lassine, better known as the dying Swan

Pabla got toured the cities of Europe with the Marinsky Company She appeared in the Paris of the early 1900s in Gisele Parisians saw her picture on the poster for the Marinsky, but her name did not appear Pabla learned from the other glittering performers of the day, performers like Sarah Bernard, that no matter how large your talent, it was wasted Unless you were willing to take that talent where the audience is and in your own name Being a Marinsky soloist wasn't enough Pabla needed a company, one bearing her own name, the Anna Pabla company The father that company would travel, the deeper and more lasting the legend, it would leave behind We were the first classical dancers to go to the Orient

They never seen Valley before She came there and was quite an experienced She was a pioneer all throughout the whole world In over 20 years, the Pabla company visited 44 countries on all six continents By boat, train, car, up to 60 people traveled over 300,000 miles, presenting almost 4,000 performances These are the statistics of the labor of legend making I think that Anna Pabla was not only in this country, but she did in Japan, she did in India, she went to Australia, she went to Italy, she went all over the world Anna Pabla has done more of the popperies, the classical ballet, more than any other company, any other individual in the world

And she never asked in the girl to do anything that she wouldn't do herself Now if there was a call at 6 o'clock in the morning for a train She would be there on the platform to make that train a 6 o'clock in the morning, she did not travel overnight in a private car The first glimpse of ballet that a worldwide audience often had was of Anna Pabla and her marinsky technique and ballet No work was more typical than Don Quixote It is of this ballet that we have some of the extremely rare film footage of Anna Pabla with full core and company It was filmed by a stage hand on one of the company's Australian tours Though the film can only suggest the vitality of the performance, it does demonstrate the elaborate style and staging of the production Another rare bit of film of Pabla by working with a partner preserves her superb technique

It is from the Marinsky Ballet Fairy Doll She had this fantastic quality and ability to still give the impression that she was moving even when she was completely static and immobile

She had this fantastic balance on point Sometimes in the party doors with her partner, she would take an arabesque on point and he would set her And he'd walk completely away and she would stay But you always felt that somehow the arms and even to the raised extended leg and foot you always felt somehow is reaching on and always moving and I think it was one of the things which gave her dancing such a very very wonderful and very personal quality I don't think I've ever seen it in another ballerina anywhere Aubrey Hitchens was a young English dancer just 19 when he joined the Pabla by company He was one of Anna Pabla's partners on several of her last tours Today Mr. Hitchens is a teacher at New York's Parkness School of Ballet To partner her was extremely difficult And when I say difficult I don't mean to imply that she was difficult But with her innate artistry she hid, she concealed all the preparations for any lifts or any peruits

And one had to learn from her when she was going to take off for a lift There would be just subtle, most subtle accent from a foot from a heel And one had to learn to catch that She would be running and then one would have her way up in the air And it was a question really of split second timing And if one wasn't there then it was just too bad and one was lost Her physical appearance was so frail, so very frail, so very spiritual And yet her body, when you danced with her, when you partnered her, was so strong it was like steel

The works for which Pabla is most remembered are not the full ballets from the Mrensky but the duets and solos The public wanted to see Pabla, see her clearly To satisfy this taste the much favored divertissement or short works were created A few of the solos were filmed not to represent an actual performance but as a test to see how well danced could be photographed with early camera equipment We see these solos today only because of those tests

One of the favorites was entitled Columbine We were sitting by a pool as the Zaz Palace outside of Petrograd And the dragonfly came sluttering down onto the water and she said, oh, I think that would make a marvellous variation Watch it, let us watch it, let us watch it, and that's where she picked up her famous dragonfly variation zone

Her audiences were people that they never saw ballet, they never saw dancing so that these people came to the theater for the fresh time to see ballet Now she had a play to these people so she developed her simple stories that played out that anybody could understand without a program To make these stories even more understandable Pabla was willing to forsake the tutu for unconventional costumes Such was the case in the dance the Californian Pompey whose petals would close at its death I remember that she was the great personality, she was the great star

She didn't need people, she touched their hearts It was almost a religious quality I think that she predicted It was on her way from Kahn, South of France to Hague, Holland to start this winter season and on the way she got a cold at home And as a matter of fact at night she got up about two o'clock in the morning, she called over her ballet master and she told him that she feels fine and I think in Kapadee she'll be able to perform The mean time to get the company together, the mean time to get the company to start to perform

At four o'clock in the morning she died and after she died I went to London to the crematory and I asked the watchman in what varies the ashes on the power of them He says, look at the book, the watchman is going to look at the book and it's marked Eastworld 3711 on the power of it All that's left on the power is the number Eastworld 3711 There is a number on a crematory wall in London And then, too, there's the thing for which she labored all her life, the memory that has survived time and lives wherever people think of dance and of dancers The legend of Anna Parlova Anna Parlova

Anna Parlova Anna Parlova

Anna Parlova Anna Parlova Anna Parlova Anna Parlova

Anna Parlova