Anna Pavlova (1881-1931)      A famous Russian ballet dancer, Anna Pavlova is best known for changing the ideals for ballet dancers, as she was small and thin, not the preferred body of a ballerina during her time.  She is also credited for creating the modern Pointe shoe. As a little girl (Lina Boultakova), Pavlova would watch the ballet students in training, and she eventually entered the Imperial Ballet Company, quickly rising to the position of prima ballerina.  Before long, she perfected a style especially evident in her dancing of Giselle and Swan Lake.  In her brief tenure at the Ballets Russes established in Paris in 1909 by the famed Russian expatriate impresario Sergei Diaghilev, Pavlova was inspired by dancers like Vaslav Nijinsky and obtained further training under a master, traveling extensively with the company.  But the famous ballerina was not without personal problems, and at one point had to take a two-year advance on her salary in order to pay off her husband's debts so he would not go to jail.
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Pavlova's passion for the art of ballet was sparked when her mother took her to a performance of Marius Petipa's original production of The Sleeping Beauty at the Imperial Mariinsky Theatre.  The lavish spectacle made a profound impression on the young Pavlova, and at the age of eight her mother took her to audition for the renowned Imperial Ballet School.  She was rejected due to her age and for what was considered to be a "sickly" physique, but she was finally accepted at the age of ten in 1891.  She made her first appearance in a ballet as a cupid in Petipa's UN conte de f?es (A Fairy Tale), which the ballet master staged especially for the students of the school.  Pavlova's years at the Imperial Ballet School were difficult.  Ballet technique did not come easily to the young Pavlova.  Her extremely arched feet, thin ankles, and long limbs clashed with the small, compact body which was at that time in favor for the ballerina.  Her fellow students taunted her with such nicknames as the broom and La petite sauvage.  Undeterred, Pavlova trained relentlessly to improve her technique.  She took extra lessons from the great teachers of the day—Christian Johansson, Pavel Gerdt and Nikolai Legat.  In 1898 she entered the classe de perfection of Ekaterina Vazem, former Prima ballerina of the Saint Petersburg Imperial Theatres.
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