Natacha Nattova

Natacha Nattova (born Nathalie Schmit; August 8, 1905 – March 7, 1988) was a Russian-born American adagio dancer, who was a star of the vaudeville circuit in the 1920s and 1930s.

Biography She was born in Saint Petersburg, but fled Russia with her parents during the 1917 Revolution and settled in Nice. She became a student at the Paris Opéra, and was attracted to modern dance. In 1923, she worked as a featured dancer in the revue Paris Sans Voiles, a showcase for the Dolly Sisters at Café des Ambassadeurs, and later that year danced in another show, Impressions-Musicale at the Gaumont-Palace.

In 1924, after adopting the name Nattova, she teamed up with French dancer Gene Myrio (born Henri Jean Raoul Delteil, 1899–1975). The pair headlined at the nightclub Au Canari as an adagio team, combining dance with graceful acrobatics. The impresario Albert de Courville then booked them to appear in a revue at the London Palladium. They were very successful, the British magazine Theatre World commenting that their dancing was "exquisite and of a quality rarely seen outside the Russian ballet." Nattova was seen as beautiful and creative, designing her own sets and costumes, but also had a volatile temperament. She and Myrio appeared in de Courville's next production, Sky High in 1925, alongside Australian performers Toots and Lorna Pounds. However, there was tension between Nattova and the sisters, and she and Myrio left the show. They performed together in other cabaret shows in London, where they were seen by American booking agent William Morris, who offered them a place in the New York show The Greenwich Village Follies. In 1930, Nattova joined with Daks, Bob Ganjou and his brother George Ganjou, in what she called a "Geometrics" act, part of which incorporated a luminous skeleton costume. The Ganjou brothers later formed their own troupe, with a third brother and another female dancer. From 1931 Nattova worked as a solo adagio act, introducing her "Dance of the Wind", in which "she used an enormous jardinière sprouting large stylized flowers with each blossom a firm metal platform upon which to leap with breath-taking abandon. Flying through space, she executed an arabesque on an azalea, a pirouette on a poppy and a toe-hold on a tulip."

Her act was incorporated into a theatre presentation which toured through 1932. After a tour of Europe, she returned to New York in 1934 with an act that also included a dance on the theme of "what would happen if a demon inventor created a radio ray that would control the thoughts of humans." Her final performances seem to have been in 1935 at the Radio City Music Hall, as part of an adagio trio, and with a troupe of male dancers, including Daks.

She retired from performance before 1940, and lived in New York with Daks. They later divorced. In the 1950s, she moved to Los Angeles, where (as Natalie Daks) she was involved in arts and crafts activities. She died in Pasadena in 1988, aged 82.