The Many-Talented Vera Karalli (1889-1972)

My interest in Vera Karalli (1889-1972) is as much as anything due to the diversity of her career - a soloist and then ballerina at the Bolshoi Theatre after graduating from the Moscow Theatre School, a member of Serge de Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes company in 1909 and then again in 1919 and 1920, a choreographer, a silent film actress and a teacher. Add to this, she was a mistress of the Russian Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich and reputedly present in the palace of Felix Yussupov on the night of Gregori Rasputin’s murder. With such a compelling figure, I felt it would be interesting to piece together some footage of her dancing and her acting. This first segment of film shows the ballerina and Leonid Zhukov performing a Spanish dance in a silent film. The second extract is from director Yevgeni Bauer’s film adaptation of Ivan Turgenev’s ’Posle smerti’ (’ГРЁЗЫ ’Dreams’ or ’After Death’, 1915) and shows Karalli as the object of a man’s day-dreami