Mathilde Kschessinska — dancer with roots in the Russian Empire
Mathilde-Marie Feliksovna Kschessinska, in Polish Matylda Krzesińska, was born on 31 August (19 August, Old Style) 1872 at Ligovo, near Peterhof, the youngest child of Feliks Krzesiński and his wife Julia. The family was Polish and noble by origin. Her father, born in Warsaw in 1823, when the city belonged to Congress Poland within the Russian Empire, had danced for twelve years in the Warsaw ballet before settling in St Petersburg in 1853; he, her brother and her sister all danced with the Imperial Ballet there.
She trained at the Imperial Ballet School and joined the company at the Mariinsky Theatre. In the 1890s she became one of its leading ballerinas and was the first Russian dancer to master the thirty-two consecutive fouettés en tournant introduced to St Petersburg by the Italian Pierina Legnani. She was given the rank of prima ballerina in 1896 and is described as prima ballerina assoluta of the Imperial Theatres; Britannica dates the title to 1895. Apart from Legnani, she was the only dancer to hold it before the Revolution. Her dominance of the company in the following years is recorded in the careers of colleagues such as Vera Trefilova, who left the Mariinsky in 1910 partly because of their rivalry.
Her mansion in Petrograd, built for her before the Revolution, was occupied by the Bolsheviks in 1917 and became their headquarters in the city; Lenin addressed crowds from its balcony after his return to the city. The building now houses the State Museum of Political History of Russia.
On 13 February 1920 she left Russia by sea with her son Vladimir, known as Vova, and Grand Duke Andrei Vladimirovich, a cousin of Nicholas II. They married in a Russian church in Cannes on 30 January 1921, and she became Princess Romanovskaya-Krasinskaya. In 1925 she converted from Catholicism to Russian Orthodoxy and took the name Maria.
In 1929 the family moved to Paris, and on 26 March that year she opened a dance studio, where she taught for some thirty years; her pupils included Margot Fonteyn and Tatiana Riabouchinska, a friend of the family from the Russian émigré community in Paris, who went on to join Colonel de Basil's company in 1932. Her memoirs appeared in English as Dancing in Petersburg. Her husband died in 1956. She died in Paris on 6 December 1971 (some sources say 7 December), aged ninety-nine.
"Left Russia by sea with her son and Grand Duke Andrei Vladimirovich on 13 February 1920; married him in Cannes in 1921; moved to Paris in 1929 and taught there for some thirty years."
Migration storyTracing the roots — Ligovo, near Peterhof, St Petersburg Governorate (Russia)
Born in 1872 at Ligovo near Peterhof into a Polish family of dancers of the Imperial Ballet, she trained at the Imperial Ballet School, became prima ballerina assoluta of the St Petersburg Imperial Theatres and left Russia in 1920.
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Ligovo, near Peterhof, St Petersburg Governorate (Russia). At the time, this region lay within the Russian Empire, which spanned from Poland to the Pacific.