Mathilde Kschessinska's biography and film ‘Mathilde’

Mathilde Kshesinskaya was an eminent Russian ballerina and was born to an artistic loved ones. Her grandfather was a popular violin player, singer and actor and each her parents had been ballet dancers. At the age of eight, Matilda enrolled in the Imperial Theatre School, where her brother and sister currently studied. She went on to become the prima ballerina assoluta of the Imperial Russian Ballet. Her life and artistic profession were closely linked to the Czar’s loved ones. The day of her graduation exam became a turning point in her life. The exam was traditionally attended by Czar Alexander III, the Empress and the successor to the Russian throne, the future Emperor Nicholas II. Right after the show, the Emperor told her: “Be the fame and decoration of our ballet!”. This event also spearheaded the connection among the ballerina and Nicholas II. A secret diary revealed final year mentions the partnership and the truth that she was carrying the emperor’s kid which was lost in a carriage accident. Their two-year relationship ended with Nicholas” engagement to his future wife, Alexandra.

The 2017 film “Mathilde” tells the story of this affair and it stormed up controversy in Russia. This is simply because the Czar and his loved ones who were massacred in 1918 are deemed saints. Mathilde was ambitious and eager to preserve her close connection with the Romanovs. She subsequently began a long time affair with Grand Duke Sergei Mikhailovich of Russia, Nicholas and Andrei’s 1st cousin once removed. As she was not in enjoy with Sergei, but enjoyed his company and protection, Mathilde pursued a connection with Grand Duke Andrei, the third Romanov to turn into involved with her. By July 1900, they became lovers, traveling collectively that summer to Biarritz and Paris and later to numerous Italian cities, such as Venice, Padua, Florence and Rome. The identity of the father of her son remained disputed. Nonetheless, she married Duke Andrei in 1921 and lived in France with him.

Dancing was her greatest passion from her childhood. She amazed her colleagues by her wonderful obsession with function, spending hours at the bar. She was the first Russian dancer to carry out 32 fouettés, a swift whipping movement of the raised leg typically accompanying a pirouette.On stage she was irresistibly charming and feminine. Her dancing was a combination of the technically irreproachable Italian style and the lyricism of the Russian school. From her father, Kshesinskaya inherited a talent for pantomime and dramatic interpretation. Her repertoire incorporated among other folks, Fairy Dragee in The Nutcracker, Odette-Odile in Swan Lake, Pakhita, Esmeralda, and Princess Aspicia in The Pharaoh’s Daughter.Right after the October Revolution she left Russia with Grand Duke Andrei Vladimirovich. Thanks to her college in Paris she presented a generation of internationally renowned dancers, names as Margaret (Margo) Fonteyn and Pamela May. She died at the age of 99 in 1971 and is buried at the Parisian cemetery Ste-Geneviève-des-Bois.Matilda F. Kshesinskaya is not only a synonym of Russian ballet at the turn of the 20th century, but also was a significant character in the life of higher society and culture of St. Petersburg in the last decades of the Russian Empire.