Odette Valery

Odette Valery (spelled Valéry in French publications), née Helene Vasilardi, (1883–?) was an Italian dancer of Greek parentage. She made her début at La Scala in 1898 at the age of fifteen.

She came to regard dancing en pointe as "old-fashioned" and made her name doing reconstructions of ancient Greek dances in bare feet. Later she portrayed Cleopatra and did an Egyptian dance with a live asp. She spent lavishly and by 1912, she was destitute. Her money ran out when she had to have an operation and as a result she could not work for an extended period. Although her weekly salary was what a workman earned in a year at the time, she hadn't saved a penny.

She was found ill and starving in a cheap boarding house in Notting Hill, London where she was being cared for by her seven-year-old son Gaeton. She had been surviving thus for a year by pawning her jewellery. She was found by a friend who was performing at Hammerstein's London Opera House. The friend took her in and was planning to send her back to her home in France to recover. It was a California heiress, Aimée Crocker, Mrs. Jackson Gouraud, who came to her aid on reading about her plight and gave a fund-raising ball in her honour at Martin's, New York. The hostess wore a live python around her neck for the event.