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A collection of photographs of Ballets Russes dancers, including images of the principal dancer and choreographer Adolph Bolm, his daughter, Kyra Alanova, the prima ballerina Tamara Karsavina, and a single photo of Nijinsky as Albrecht in Giselle. Fifteen were taken by Emil Otto Hoppé (1878-1972), one of the most sought-after photographers of the 1920s and 1930s. He photographed the Ballets Russes from 1911 to 1923; these images are predominantly from their only American tours in 1916 and 1917. Karsavina appears in five and Bolm in twelve, including two images of them together in costume for Le Pavillon d'Armide, one of them together in Thamar, and two in L'Oiseau de Feu. Adolph Bolm (1884-1951) was a pioneer of ballet in the United States. From 1909 to 1916 he was a principal dancer and choreographer for the Ballets Russes. During their American tour, Bolm injured himself while dancing Thamar. He stayed in the USA and quickly established himself as a coveted choreographer. There were no American ballet companies and dancers performed with opera companies until Bolm established Chicago Allied Arts, the first repertory ballet company in the USA. He later founded the San Francisco Opera Ballet and was one of five choreographers involved in the 1940 founding season for New York's Ballet Theatre. Tamara Karsavina (1885-1978) was a principal artist of the Imperial Russian Ballet before joining Diaghilev's Ballets Russes. She is perhaps most famous for creating the title role in Mikhail Fokine's L'Oiseau de Feu. Seventeen photographs are unattributed. One, showing Bolm and Karsavina in Scheherazade, is from the same Ballets Russes season. Another shows Bolm as the Golden Slave in Scheherazade (post-1929), while a third shows Bolm as Amoun in Cleopatra, undated but perhaps 1910. A further three are portraits of Bolm's daughter, the ballerina Kyra Alanova, two as the princess in A Kiss in Xanadu and one in unidentified costume. She danced with the Ballets Russes between 1918 and 1924, but these photos are likely later: one is dated in pencil "London 1925" on the verso, and another has the ink stamp of Vaughan & Freeman on the verso, London photographers who were active from 1928. The remaining 11 photographs are all dress rehearsals from an unidentified ballet with an "oriental" theme, which does not appear to be any of the six ballets of that kind that the Ballets Russes debuted in Paris. Pencil annotations on the verso of nine images suggest "Adolf Bolm? Kyra [Deakin] Alanova?", and two images are annotated in a different hand with Alanova's name, weight, height, hair and eye colour, and New York address. These are likely from ballets choreographed by Bolm once he had parted with the Ballets Russes and established himself as one of the most important figures in American ballet. Andrew Foster, "A Directory of Diaghilev Dancers", Dance Research: The Journal of the Society for Dance Research, vol. 37, no. 2, 2019, pp. 181-205. Together, 32 photographic prints of varying mediums including carbon and silver gelatin, from approx. 170 x 122 mm to 260 x 203 mm, the photograph of Kyra Alanova as the princess in A Kiss in Xanadu mounted on card (260 x 198 mm). Edges rubbed, occasional chips, a few photographs overexposed or lightly silvered at edges, remnants of adhesive to verso of two photographs, two short closed tears to Adolph Bolm in Le Pavillon d'Armide, one with tape repair to verso. A well-preserved collection.
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