Anna Pavlova On Screen At BFI Southbank In August

BFI Southbank is launching a season of films featuring the ballet legend Anna Pavlova (1881 – 1931). Anna Pavlova on Screen is part of PAVLOVA 2012, a celebration of the ballerina acquiring her London home at Ivy House in 1912, where she lived until her death in 1931. As well as being an inspirational ballerina, Anna Pavlova was also an independent career woman and mega-star loved by the media and audiences throughout the world. Pavlova had many of her solos recorded and during the season audiences will be able to see footage of her dancing in The Immortal Swan (1935), The Dying Swan (1917) and an edition of Omnibus (1970). She invested in the medium of film to such a degree that she even starred in a Hollywood feature film The Dumb Girl of Portici (1916), which led one Guardian critic to state that ‘next to seeing Pavlova in person, there is no better substitute than seeing her through the mechanism of the kinema’. The documentaries, recordings of dances and dramatisations on offer throughout this season, indicate the range of ballets Anna Pavlova performed, and will, alongside expert introductions from season curator Jane Pritchard, place her career in context with contemporary recordings of dance.
Pavlova’s role in The Dumb Girl of Portici (1916) revealed why she was a great dramatic ballerina. In this adaptation of Auber’s opera Masaniello she plays Fenella, a poor Italian girl who falls in love and is then betrayed by a Spanish nobleman who disguises himself as a fisherman. A Preview + Q&A of Madam and the Dying Swan (with filmmakers Candida Brady and Titus Ogilvy and dancer Marguerite Porter, hosted by Jane Pritchard) will provide an intriguing look at the development of British Ballet. It focuses on how, in 1980, Dame Ninette de Valois passed on to the ballerina Marguerite Porter the version of Pavlova’s Swan solo she had notated in 1913. In the film we see Porter, in turn, teaching it to a Royal Ballet ballerina in the present day. The Immortal Swan (1935) combines documentary material on Pavlova with extracts of later stagings of some of the ballets she danced, and also material which shows some of her time at Ivy House. Omnibus: Anna Pavlova (1970) gives the opportunity for those who saw her dance to recall their experiences of watching the great ballerina on stage and Pavlova and Her Contemporaries on Screen, places footage of Pavlova alongside some of her contemporaries including Tamara Karsavina, Maria Baldina and Theodore Kossloff.
In the sole film to dramatise Pavlova’s life Pavlova: A Woman for All Time (1983), Galina Beliaeva stars at the titular ballerina. The film interprets Pavlova’s life, from her childhood in the countryside near St Petersburg, through to her death in The Hague. Despite occasionally lacking some knowledge of dance, it is an interesting film, complete with some striking cameos from James Fox, Bruce Forsyth and Roy Kinnear and is befitting to a season which will dedicate itself to exploring the life and work of this world famous ballerina.
The BFI Southbank is open to all. BFI members are entitled to a discount on all tickets. BFI Southbank Box Office tel: 020 7928 3232. Unless otherwise stated tickets are £10.00, concs £6.75 Members pay £1.50 less on any ticket.
For more info and screening details visit the BFI website