Ballerina Marina Semenova: biography, personal life, photo

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

Marina Timofeevna Semenova, a ballerina from God, was born in St. Petersburg on June 12, 1908. She danced from the time she got on her feet, first by herself, then she studied in a dance circle. When she was ten years old, she was admitted to the choreographic school, where her teacher was the mother of the legend of the Soviet ballet Galina Ulanova - M. F. Romanova.

Star teachers

It was a hungry and cold year in 1918. It was very uncomfortable in St. Petersburg, but in the classroom all this was forgotten. The teacher fell in love with the cheerful and flexible girl, and Marina simply adored her teacher. What was her amazement and grief when the young ballerina found out that she was being transferred through the class and, therefore, she would now study with the indescribably strict A. Ya. Vaganova. However, the very first lesson showed that Agrippina Yakovlevna also knows how not only to praise the students, but also to openly admire. Relations have been established.

Galina Ulanova's mother was not only a ballerina, her whole family consisted of hereditary artists, even the beginning of this continuity was lost among the generations. And Marina Semenova grew up in the simplest and largest family - her mother had six children. His father died early, and his mother remarried a few years later. Marina Semenova turned out to be lucky: a very gentle, kind and sympathetic sailor who had seen a lot in his life became a close and dear person for all six, a second father.

Road to ballet

A close friend of Marina's mother - Ekaterina Evgenievna - was an amateur ballerina, she often performed at charity concerts with her own solo numbers, she also led a dance circle, which once came two sisters - Valeria and Marina. In the process of training, the latter showed not only amazing plasticity and musicality, but also a sense of purpose and a rare capacity for work at her age. Ekaterina Evgenievna, after listening to the reviews of her friend, decided that the girl should be taught ballet professionally.

In the choreographic school, however, Marina Semenova at first did not make the proper impression. She was thin, undersized and very shy. And then she got lucky again. Among the examiners was Viktor Semyonov, one of the leading dancers of the Mariinsky Theatre. Maybe he noticed a divine spark in the girl, but he did not object to the commission, he simply jokingly asked to accept his namesake at the school.

First performances

While studying at the choreographic school, Marina Timofeevna Semenova first participated in small concert numbers, and by the time she graduated she also performed the main parts of ballets. "The Brook" by Delibes, her final exam on the stage of the Mariinsky Theater, became a sensation among connoisseurs and ballet lovers. Moreover, Marina Semyonova made this performance a big event of the theater season in Leningrad.

Enthusiastic reviews appeared in the newspapers, in which Marina was compared with Anna Pavlova, describing the excited and noisy delight of the auditorium. This unanimous admiration was aroused by sixteen-year-old Marina Timofeevna Semenova, whose biography was just beginning to become legendary.

Beginning in profession

Who would have known then that the happiness of communicating with a magnificent ballerina, who also brought up no less talented dancers, would last no less than 86 years. Marina Timofeevna Semenova, a biography whose years of life turned out to be both fruitful and long, lived for almost one hundred and two years. And then this young student of Vaganova was immediately compared with all the legendary ballerinas of the past. Even "Taglioni XX century" was named.

The Leningrad theater was subdued by a graduate of the choreographic school so much that in this case all age-old ballet traditions were violated. Her dance technique was at such a level inaccessible to ordinary graduates that Marina Semenova immediately after the final exams became the leading ballerina in the troupe! Nobodydid not object, everyone saw how high she jumped, how easily in one jump the distance flies half the stage.

Her ballets

Marina Timofeevna Semenova, whose photos show a variety of images she created on stage, danced exceptionally artistically. The multifaceted talent of reincarnation allowed her to embody any of her roles penetratingly and authentically.

Masha from "The Nutcracker" - bright and sad at the same time, real and fantastic at the same time; Kitri from the ballet "Don Quixote" - proud, daring, full of fire and excitement; Esmeralda, a young gypsy, mysterious, inaccessible, at the same time alluring and radiant - such different roles, with the most opposite characters, she succeeded equally well.

Giselle was also beautiful and brought Marina Semyonova worldwide fame on tour in Paris, where she made her debut in Giselle. However, Marina Giselle left the repertoire.

The Evil Years

By that time she had become a real fatal beauty. And of course, she knew her worth. She was surrounded by high-ranking admirers, admired by the beauty and talent that the ballerina Marina Semenova proudly carried through her life. Personal life, however, brought more and more difficult trials.

Her husband, who worked as an ambassador to Turkey, was suddenly arrested in 1937, and Marina was under house arrest for a long time, first as the wife of an enemy of the people, and later as the wife of a traitor to the motherland. In the first case, it was possible to live, although it was not easy to work, in the second, a status awaited hertravel-restricted and prepared suitcase with linen.

So the socialite, the flower of the Soviet elite, who shone at diplomatic receptions, because she was fluent in languages, especially French, was forced to lie low and wait for the worst. However, the authorities generously encouraged her during these years twice: Marina Semenova received the title of Honored Artist of the RSFSR in 1937, and became a laureate of the Stalin Prize in 1941.

Celebrity reviews

Ballerina Tatyana Vecheslova dedicated many kind, warm words to Marina Semyonova in her book. She wrote that the young dancer was already a professional, striking the imagination, her every movement was so perfect, it was so harmonious.

"La Bayadère", "Raymonda", "Sleeping Beauty", "Pharaoh's Daughter", "Humpbacked Horse", "Coppelia" - Marina learned any part in a couple of months. She danced tirelessly and with increasing success with the public. A. V. Lunacharsky told S. P. Diaghilev in Paris how exceptionally good the young Semyonova was in Leningrad. Stefan Zweig, seeing Marina on stage, predicted a great future for her.

Swan Lake

The classical repertoire was practically within the reach of this beautiful ballerina. Another debut took place in a real masterpiece by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky: Semyonova danced the main part in the ballet "Swan Lake". Marina was so imbued with the role that it seemed to the audience that the not timid girl who was bewitched was listening to confessions, still not knowing anything about the realfeeling, and the bird, strong, captivated, strives for freedom, where you can spread your white wings and fly away.

Siegfried was danced by the same namesake - Viktor Alexandrovich Semyonov, the theater's premier and now the artistic director of the Leningrad School, to whom she was so indebted and who was twice her age. This difference did not prevent him from getting the hand of a lovely partner and becoming her first husband. The namesakes got married.

In the thirties, Marina and Viktor were transferred to the Bolshoi Theater, they moved to Moscow, where the life of a young ballerina for some time shone with especially bright, and most importantly, new colors. Husband and wife, although they were used to working in pairs, since they danced most of the performances nearby, toured together, but fate still did not allow them to enjoy happiness for a long time. The couple broke up, and Marina Semyonova, without formalizing her marriage legally, became the wife of a statesman and prominent diplomat L. M. Karakhan.

Despite the fact that Semenova really missed her hometown, her only favorite theater, her best mentor, she easily mastered role after role. Technical difficulties for her almost did not exist, and she especially loved the new productions of modern performances. However, the role of Odette from "Swan Lake" remained the most beloved, trembling memory of the heart.

Pedagogy

The time has come when I had to give myself entirely to the future generation of dance. In the fifties, Marina Timofeevna Semenova began her no less legendary teaching career. AndI remembered, I remembered … And I returned the memory to others. When in 1997 Glinka's opera returned to the Bolshoi Theater, which, along with Swan Lake, once served as the hallmark of the country's best theater, Marina Timofeevna was seated in the most honorable place in the hall, because many remembered how in the victorious, distant 1945, she brilliantly danced in the opera "Ivan Susanin" this amazing w altz.

Hero of Socialist Labor, professor of the Russian Academy of Theater Arts, People's Artist of the USSR glorified the Soviet ballet not only with her artistic activities, but also with her pedagogical ones. The names of her consummate students testify better than any epithets. Here they are, the wonderful ballet masters nurtured by her, the star class of Marina Semyonova - "Semyonovsky Regiment", as the following joked: Maya Plisetskaya, Natalya Bessmertnova, Nadezhda Pavlova, Nina Timofeeva, Natalia Kasatkina, Lyudmila Semenyaka and many, many others from the glory of Russian ballet.

The centenary of the ballerina in 2008 was celebrated by all of Moscow on a grand scale. The Bolshoi Theater showed exactly those ballets in which Marina Semenova shone: "Swan Lake", "Raymonda", "La Bayadère". She survived all our revolutions, all our wars, but she did not betray classical art even in the most difficult times. She also survived and celebrated her centenary. She died in the one hundred and second year of her magnificent life, in 2010. Marina Semyonova was buried at the Novodevichy cemetery.