Vaslav or Vatslav Nijinsky was a Russian ballet dancer and choreographer of Polish ancestry. He is regarded as the greatest male dancer of the early 20th century. He was celebrated for his virtuosity and for the depth and intensity of his characterizations. He could dance en pointe, a rare skill among male dancers at the time, and was admired for his seemingly gravity-defying leaps.
The Teatro Colón is a historic opera house in Buenos Aires, Argentina. It is considered one of the ten best opera houses in the world by National Geographic. According to a survey carried out by the acoustics expert Leo Beranek among leading international opera and orchestra directors, the Teatro Colón has the room with the best acoustics for opera and the second best for concerts in the world.
Michael Fokine was a Russian choreographer and dancer.
Bronislava Nijinska was a Russian ballet dancer of Polish origin, and an innovative choreographer. She came of age in a family of traveling, professional dancers.
The ballet, The Afternoon of a Faun, was choreographed by Vaslav Nijinsky for the Ballets Russes, and was first performed in the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris on 29 May 1912. Nijinsky danced the main part himself. The music is Claude Debussy's symphonic poem Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune. Both the music and the ballet were inspired by the poem L'Après-midi d'un faune by Stéphane Mallarmé. The costumes, sets and programme illustrations were designed by the painter Léon Bakst.
Les Sylphides is a short, non-narrative ballet blanc to piano music by Frédéric Chopin, selected and orchestrated by Alexander Glazunov.
Julio Adrián Lojo Bocca is an Argentine ballet dancer. Bocca spent twenty years as a principal dancer with American Ballet Theatre. From 2010 to 2018, he served as artistic director of the National Ballet of Uruguay, administered by SODRE, the country's broadcasting and cultural authority.
The Ballets Russes was an itinerant ballet company begun in Paris that performed between 1909 and 1929 throughout Europe and on tours to North and South America. The company never performed in Russia, where the Revolution disrupted society. After its initial Paris season, the company had no formal ties there.
Olga Alexandrovna Spessivtseva was a Russian ballerina whose stage career spanned from 1913 to 1939.
Le Spectre de la rose is a short ballet about a young girl who dreams of dancing with the spirit of a souvenir rose from her first ball. The ballet was written by Jean-Louis Vaudoyer who based the story on a verse by Théophile Gautier and used the music of Carl Maria von Weber's piano piece Aufforderung zum Tanz as orchestrated by Hector Berlioz.
A danseur noble traditionally was a male ballet dancer who projected great nobility of character. Over the last century, the term has been used to define a male principal dancer who performs at the highest theatrical level combining grace with ability. Some use danseur noble as the masculine equivalent to a Prima Ballerina, or to refer to the male partner of a ballerina during a pas de deux.
Raquel Forner (1902–1988) was an Argentine painter known for her expressionist works.
Norma Fontenla was an Argentine prima ballerina.
José Neglia was a notable Argentine ballerino, who perhaps more than any other figure, helped popularize the classical ballet in his country.
Romola de Pulszky, , was a Hungarian aristocrat, the daughter of a politician and an actress. Her father had to go into exile when she was a child, and committed suicide in Australia. As a young woman she became interested in dance and specifically Vaslav Nijinsky, the noted premier danseur of the Ballets Russes. They married in Buenos Aires on 10 September 1913 while the company was on tour. They had two daughters, Kyra and Tamara, before he was institutionalized for the remaining 30 years of his life for schizophrenia.
Lida Martinoli (1914–1991) was an Argentine dancer, choreographer, and theatre performer in Buenos Aires. Born in Rosario, Santa Fe in 1914, she was the daughter of the artists Fanny Montiano and Carlos Martinoli. She studied ballet at La Scala in Milan before returning to Buenos Aires in 1932. She joined the corps de ballet of the Teatro Colón, where she danced until 1956. At the Teatro Colón, she served as prima ballerina during the 1940s, dancing the choreographies of Vaslav Nijinsky and Margarita Wallmann and starring in her version of The Nutcracker with Michael Borovski and Maria Ruvanova. In 1953, as prima ballerina for Teatro Colón, she performed at Carnegie Hall in her North American debut. When she retired from dancing, Martinoli began to choreograph, and is known for her kitschy and outlandish dances - the choreography for "La Leprosa" required the actor to stick ham to themselves that fell off during the dance, imitating the symptoms of leprosy. She died in Santa Fe in 1991. Screenwriters Kado Kostzer and Afredo Rodriguez Arias wrote the play "Familie d'Artistes" about Lida and the Martinoli family in 1989, which was staged at the Teatro Maipo in Buenos Aires in 1991.
María Ruanova was an Argentine dancer, choreographer, teacher and ballet master, known for her performances at the Teatro Colón and internationally. She is considered the first Argentina-grown ballet dancer to gain international fame.
Elena Smirnova was the last prima ballerina of the Mariinsky Theater in the Imperial period of Russia. Starring in many leading roles, she often performed choreography created by Marius Petipa and Boris G. Romanov. Participating in early films of Germany and Russia, she made eight silent films and participated in the premiers of both the Ballets Russes in Paris and in the first performance of Russian ballet in Japan.
Hernán Javier Piquín is an Argentine dancer and choreographer. He was born in the city of Los Polvorines, in the northwest of Greater Buenos Aires, 33 km from the center of the Federal Capital. He attended the Higher Institute of Art of the Teatro Colón.
