Vera Krasovskaya

Vera Mikhailovna Krasovskaya (; 11 September 1915 – 15 August 1999) was a Russian ballet historian, critic and dancer. She began her dancing career at the Leningrad Ballet School and graduated from it in 1933. Krasovskaya performed with the Kirov Ballet at the Mariinsky Theatre from 1933 to 1941 before stepping down to become a critic and studied at the Leningrad Ostrovsky Institute of Theatre. She published two volumes of four books on Russian ballet and went on to author a larger second volume focus on the history of ballet in Western Europe. Krasovskaya also wrote biographies on Anna Pavlova, Vaslav Nijinsky, Natalia Dudinskaya, Irina Kolpakova, Nikita Dolgushin and Agrippina Vaganova. She was awarded the Triumph Prize in December 1998 for her contribution to Russian culture.

Early life Krasovskaya's birth was on 11 September 1915 (old style 29 August 1915) in Petrograd (now Saint Petersburg), Russia. and had one brother. Krasovskaya's grandfather was a pre-revolution senator and her mother was fluent in multiple languages. Krasovskaya graduated from the school in 1933.

Career Krasovskaya began performing with the Kirov Ballet at the Mariinsky Theatre in 1933. She continued to dance for the following eight years because she desired to learn about art history and was not active enough to improve her dancing ability.

In the 1950s, Krasovskaya was a prominent figure in urging new approaches to dancing in drama, publishing in pamphlets and the press as well as on meaning and content in ballet, which resulted in some relaxation of certain attitudes considered limited.

She travelled to the United States in 1989 to present at the Balatine Conference in Miami and at New York University. This was the first occasion in which a recipient was honoured for their work on dance since it was first presented in 1992.

She was a member of the Union of Soviet Writers; the Council on Choreography; the Council on the Coordination of Scientific Research Work; the U.S.S.R. Ministry of Culture and the Arts Council of Leningrad.

Personal life

She married the writer David Zolotnitskiy in October 1949. Krasovskaya had a son who went on to become a professor at St Petersburg Theatre Academy and was stepmother to one daughter. On 15 August 1999, she died at her home in Saint Petersburg following a long and serious illness. Four days later, Krasovskaya was buried at the Memorial Komarovo cemetery in Komarovo.

Legacy

Krasovskaya was outspoken on the current development in ballet. The St Petersburg correspondent for the Dancing Times and friend of hers Igor Stupnikov called her "a woman of sharp mind and great sense of humour who was a staunch advocate of everything new and progressive. She helped greatly the young choreographers, such as Yuri Grigorovich and Igor Belsky, passionately defending their first ballets on the Kirov stage."