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Violetta Elvin

Russian ballet dancer (1923–2021) From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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Violetta Elvin (née Prokhorova; 3 November 1923 – 27 May 2021) was a Russian prima ballerina and actress. In 1986, The Times described Elvin as "the only rival ever to give Dame Margot Fonteyn a run for her money".[1]

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Early life

Elvin was born on 3 November 1923[2] in Moscow, and graduated from the Moscow State Dance School in 1942. She was the daughter of Irena Grimouzinskaya, an actor and artist, and Vassilie Prokhorov, an aviation pioneer.[2]

Career

Elvin was only 20 when she had already danced the leads in Swan Lake, Marius Petipa's Don Quixote, and The Fountain of Bakhchisarai with the State Ballet of Tashkent.[3]

From 1951 to 1956 she was a prima ballerina of Sadler's Wells Ballet, now The Royal Ballet, before retiring and moving to Italy.[1][4]

Personal life

In 1945, she met and married British architect Harold Elvin in Moscow, and was allowed to leave the USSR. On the journey, she played chess with Dimitri Shostakovich.[3] They divorced in 1952.[2] In 1953, she married the American impresario Siegbert Weinberger, but this also ended in divorce.[2]

In 1959, she married Fernando Savarese, an Italian lawyer who also managed the family hotel on the Sorrento peninsula.[2] They had a son, Antonio "Toti" in 1960.[2]

A biographical novel about Elvin, written by Raffaele Lauro, titled Dance The Love - A Star in Vico Equense,[5][6][7] was presented in Vico Equense, in a national première, on 27 July 2016, within the Social World Film Festival - International Exhibition of Social Cinema.[8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16]

Raffaele Lauro also co-authored the volume, Dance the Love - A Star in Vico Equense. Images - Testimonies, GoldenGate Edizioni, 2016 with Riccardo Piroddi, .[17]

Elvin died in May 2021 at the age of 97.[18]

Repertoire

References

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