Nina Vyroubova (1921-2007).France has produced many celebrated soubrette sou·brette n. 1. a. A saucy, coquettish, intriguing maidservant in comedies or comic opera. b. An actress or a singer taking such a part. 2. A young woman regarded as flirtatious or frivolous. dancers--such as Zizi Jeanmaire Renée Marcelle Jeanmaire, known as Zizi Jeanmaire, (born April 29 1924) is a ballet dancer and wife of renowned dancer and choreographer Roland Petit. She became famous in the 1950s because of her titular role in the ballet Carmen, produced in London in 1949. and Colette Marchand--but apart from the unique Balanchine-oriented, Franco-American Violette Verdy Violette Verdy (1933–), born Nelly Guillerm, is a French ballerina who has worked as a director of dance companies and in other related capacities since her retirement from performing in the late 1970s. and the more recently celebrated Sylvie Guillem, only two French prima ballerinas have won international accolades: Yvette Chauvire, born in 1917, and Nina Vyroubova, born four years later in the Crimea. Little known in the United States, Vyroubova was a Romantic dancer whose wraithlike Adj. 1. wraithlike - lacking in substance; "strange fancies of unreal and shadowy worlds"- W.A.Butler; "dim shadowy forms"; "a wraithlike column of smoke" shadowy style, gossamer-like jump, and sad oval-shaped face evoked descriptions of Taglioni and Grisi. She trained with that diamond generation of Paris teachers from the Maryinsky--Preobrajenska, Egorova and Trefilova--and made her debut in 1937 as Swanilda in Coppelia. During World War II she danced in Paris recitals and with small transient companies, but it was in 1945 with the Boris Kochno/Roland Petit Ballets des Champs Elysees where she first made her mark. In 1946, when the company staged a reconstruction of La Sylphide by Victor Gsovsky, she found the role of her lifetime. Serge Lifar designated her an etoile of the Paris Opera Ballet The Paris Opéra Ballet is the official ballet company of the Opéra national de Paris, otherwise known as the Palais Garnier, though known more popularly simply as the Paris Opéra. in 1949, where she remained until 1956. The following year she began a five-year stay with Le Grand Ballet du Marquis de Cuevas. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Her only U.S. appearances were as a guest artist with the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo Ballet company formed in Monte Carlo in 1932. The name derived from Sergey Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, which dissolved after his death in 1929. Under René Blum and Col. W. in its final season, 1961-62. She was a dancer of the greatest distinction. I shall always recall her presence in La Sylphide--which in London, through illness, she only danced a wildly acclaimed once!--her vibrant yet fugitive Giselle, her unearthly self-absorption as the Sleepwalker in Balanchine's La Sonnambula, and, in a quite different vein, her Danilova-like edge and style in Gsovsky's Grand Pas Classique. |
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