WHAT’S IN A NAME?

“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet”, Shakespeare wrote in “Romeo and Juliet”. Nevertheless, when we speak about the ballet of the early 20th century in Europe, it was everything about the names.

After the great success of Diaghilev’s “Russian Seasons”, there appeared an idea that all the great ballet dancers were Russian. Actually, the fame of the ballerinas from the Mariinsky Theatre Anna Pavlova, Alexandra Danilova, Tamara Karsavina just made everybody think so.

That’s how British-born Lilian Alicia Marks turned into Alicia Markova, whilst her most frequent partner Francis Patrick Chippendal Healey-Kay became Anton Dolin.

On the other hand, it was Diaghilev who insisted on his employees changing “difficult” names for the sake of the beauty of the program: Georgy Balanchivadze was converted into George Balanchine and Tamara Gevergeeva into Geva.



In the photo Alicia Markova, Anton Dolin, Tamara Geva.