Nina Verchinina

Nina Verchinina (20 January 1910 – 16 December 1995)

Early life Verchinina was born in 1910 in Moscow and spent her childhood in Shanghai before moving to Paris as a teenager. In Paris she trained with prominent teachers, including Olga Preobrajenska and Bronislava Nijinska, and studied the movement theories of Rudolf von Laban, which broadened her stylistic range and helped form the distinctive fluidity of her arm and torso work.

Career Verchinina made her stage debut with the Ida Rubinstein company in 1929. She joined the Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo in 1932 and remained with the troupe in its various formations throughout the 1930s under the direction of René Blum, Leonide Massine and Col. W. de Basil.

During the Second World War Verchinina built a significant reputation in Cuba and South America while maintaining ties with de Basil. After the war she returned to Europe to tour, and in 1946–47 served as ballet mistress at the Teatro Municipal in Rio de Janeiro, which later became her long-term home.

In the late 1940s and early 1950s Verchinina founded several companies, including one touring Spain in 1949 and another, Ballet Nina Verchinina, in Rio. She choreographed for institutions in Argentina and Brazil, creating ballets such as Pastoral Symphony, Narcisse, Rhapsody in Blue and Salome. She later established a studio in Copacabana and continued teaching internationally.

Later life and death Verchinina lived in Rio de Janeiro for the rest of her life and remained professionally active into old age. She died of a heart attack at her home in Copacabana on 16 December 1995.