Tamara Tchinarova

Tamara Yevsevievna Tchinarova (; [Рекемчук]; 18 July 1919 – 31 August 2017), also known as Tamara Finch, was a Romanian-born émigré Russian and French ballerina who contributed significantly to the development of Australian dance companies and was a Russian–English interpreter for touring ballet companies. She was a dance writer and author, as Tamara Finch, of a number of non-fiction books. She was the first wife of actor Peter Finch.

Early life and family Born Tamara Yevsevievna Rekemchuk in 1919 in Cetatea Albă, Bessarabia to a Ukrainian journalist father with Georgian antecedents and a nurse mother of Armenian descent. Her maternal grandfather, Kristapor Chinaryan, was an Armenian landowner who survived the Hamidian massacres by the Ottoman Empire. In 1895, Chinaryan fled to Bessarabia, where he adopted the Russified surname of Chinarov. He married a Ukrainian woman and eventually became prosperous, owning three vineyards, three houses and a hotel. Her grandfather, she wrote, "would achieve success in business even on a desert island. He was practical, quick, receptive, generous, envied and loved." During the Kishinev pogroms, he sheltered Jewish families in his basements. In the 1920s, the family moved to Paris, where her father had sought a journalistic career and one day took his daughter to see a performance of the Ballets Russes. Young Tamara made up her mind then to become a ballerina. She soon began her dance training with émigré ballerinas from the Imperial Russian Ballet. In 1926, her father resolved to return to the Soviet Union. Tamara's mother, however, was resolutely Anti-Bolshevik and decided to stay on in Paris with Tamara and neither ever saw him again. Tamara took her mother's maiden name, Chinarova (transliterated in French as "Tchinarova"). Unbeknown to his abandoned family, her father married again in the USSR. His second wife was a Ukrainian actress, Lidia Prikhodko, and in 1927 they had a son, Alexandr Rekemchuk (d. 2017), who went on to become an accomplished author. Meanwhile, Yevsevy worked for the Soviet Secret police but was arrested, imprisoned and finally shot in 1937 during the Great Purge. He was posthumously rehabilitated after Stalin's death. Tchinarova and classmates Irina Baronova, who became a fast friend, Tatiana Riabouchinska and Tamara Toumanova were dubbed Balanchine's "Baby Ballerinas" and known as the "Russians who have never danced in Russia." Two years later in 1938 accompanied by her mother, she returned to Australia with another de Basil troupe, the Covent Garden Russian Ballet. She was admired for her portrayal of Tamar the Georgian Queen in Michel Fokine's dramatic ballet Thamar, and was praised for her dancing in demi-character roles in ballets such as Le Beau Danube. In the 1980s and 90s she published a number of biographies of dancers and an autobiography in 2007.

Personal life During World War II, Tchinarova was first engaged to the Australian photojournalist Fred Breen who was in the Royal Australian Air Force. Breen died in a bombing raid over Germany in 1942. Some months later, she met the English-born Australian actor Peter Finch. Although Finch was in the forces, they were able to marry in 1943 and she continued her dancing career.

Tamara Finch continued living in London until 2004 when she retired, at age 87, to Spain to be with her family. In 2006, she met for the first time her half-brother, Alexandr Rekemchuk, eight years her junior, who visited from Moscow.