Marina Semyonova was a virtuoso ballerina of
great warmth and clarity; majestically graceful, she was able to colour
her movement with a rare harmony of strength and lyricism. Unlike the
ballerinas of her time she was tall, which gave her an authority and a
breadth of line and dramatic beauty. She was the pride and joy of Soviet
ballet during the 1930s.
Marina Timofeyevna Semyonova was born in St Petersburg on 12 June 1908.
From
first to last she was the pupil of Agrippina Vaganova and graduated at
the
age of 17, being the first of a long string of brilliant danseuses to
emerge
from the Vaganova mould. At her graduation performance, she was
coached by
Vaganova in the part of Naila, nymph of the stream in the Petipa
ballet The
Brook, renamed La Source, a ballet in which her teacher had scored her
initial success.
Her first appearance with the Kirov Ballet was on 11 December 1927 in
Fyodor
Lopukhov's The Serf Ballerina (with music by Korchmarev) which was not
a
success. (Later Rostislav Zakharov made a new production with music by
Boris
Asafiev.) Her career soon took off, however, with bravura performances
in
Vasily Vainonen's Flames of Paris (Asafiev), in Lopukhov's Taras Bulba
(Soloviev-Sedoi) and in a host of classic ballets such as Swan Lake,
Coppélia, La Bayadère, Raymonda and The Little Humpbacked Horse.
She also scored outstanding successes dancing in the operas Ruslan and
Ludmilla, Ivan Susanin and Khovanshchina. She was greatly loved by
Leningrad
audiences and was considered to have evolved the heroic style which
would
become the hallmark of the Soviet Ballet of the 1920s and '30s, though
the
critic A Grozdev preferred to call her "the flower of the old art".
In 1930 she was transferred from Leningrad to become prima-ballerina of
the
Bolshoi Ballet in Moscow, where she was most regularly partnered by
Alexei
Yermolayev, who was also transferred from Leningrad and was one of the
great
heroic dancers of the era. They were well matched, Yermolayev with his
soaring leaps and his demonic personality,; she with her flowing,
feminine
charm. Together they created a fantastic aura of magical power and
epic
poetry. They established the legend of Bolshoi greatness, shrouded in
mystery and cut off from the world.
But in 1935, by some diplomatic sleight of hand, Semyonova was allowed
abroad.
Not for nothing was she married to one of Stalin's cabinet ministers!
She
scored one of her greatest triumphs when she danced Giselle with Serge
Lifar
at the Paris Opera. Needless to say, the curiosity of the public was
unquenchable and her glorious élan teamed with Lifar's brilliant
aplomb were
a revelation that shook the artistic purlieus of Paris to its
foundations.
Not since Diaghilev's assault on Paris in 1911 had balletomanes been
so agog
with amazement and disbelief. It was undoubtedly Semyonova's greatest
moment. Together with Lifar she gave a number of concert performances
and
was feted, after which she returned to the seclusion of the Bolshoi.
By this time a new star was rising. In nearby Leningrad, Galina Ulanova
was
being heralded as the great star of Soviet ballet. Semyonova's career,
however, continued undisturbed until the Second World War and the
evacuation
of the Bolshoi Ballet to Kuibishev.
In the chaos that ensued she danced bravely on, always showing
tremendous
enthusiasm, no matter what she danced or what the conditions. She also
did
her share in taking entertainment to the troops. After the War, life
could
never be the same. With the return to Moscow she was gradually
supplanted by
the new star, Ulanova. She was no longer featured in the premieres of
new
ballets and her superlative assets were overshadowed by the
incomparable
lustre of her rival. The two great ballerinas, working in close
proximity,
never met. Each endeavoured to ignore the existence of the other.
By 1953 Semyonova's dancing career had run its course; she became
teacher-répétiteur, a normal transition, and she proved herself an
excellent, if very strict teacher, demanding from her pupils the last
drop
of blood. There was perhaps an undercurrent of bitterness in her
character.
She could be harsh; but she obtained results and from her hand came a
long
line of remarkable ballerinas in the aristocratic style that she
extolled.
She remained head of the ballet faculty at GITIS, the Academy of Theatre
Arts,
and continued to coach the star ballerinas of the Bolshoi until she
was 96
years old.
John Gregory
Marina Timofeyevna Semyonova, ballerina and teacher: born St
Petersburg 12
June 1908; married Lev Karakhan; one daughter; died Moscow 9 June
2010.