Anna Pavlova was a famous Russian ballerina of the late 19th and the early 20th century. Her name along with that of Nijinsky is synonymous with the art of ballet. Pavlova is a legend largely remembered for her famous dance The Dying Swan and because she was the first ballerina to travel around the world and bring ballet to people who had never seen it.

Anna Pavlova was born in St Petersburg in 1881. She studied with the Imperial Ballet School attached to the Mariinsky Theatre. Her main teacher was Marius Petipa. She made her debut at 17, and by 1906 she had become the Mariinsky's principal ballerina. In 1907 she made her first foreign tour, and in 1908, on her second, joined Diaghilev's Ballets Russes.

In 1912 she purchased Ivy House in Hampstead, England, where she established her own school of dance. She made her last appearance in St. Petersburg in 1913 and spent the rest of her career almost constantly on tour, bringing ballet to millions for the first time through the drawing power of her legendary name.

Her rise to fame as one of Russia's leading ballerinas after a struggle against poverty, and later her world-wide triumphs, made her life story one of unusual interest.

She is said to have covered 350,000 miles in her tours and was spoken of as the most traveled of all modern artists. Her tours embraced the principal cities of the United States, Canada, Mexico, South America, South Africa, Europe and the Orient.

Proclaimed by her admirers as the greatest of living dancers, her appearance on the stage, whether in New York or Tokyo, was always made the occasion of a demonstration. The passage of time did not seem to dim the luster of her name or the exquisite technique of her dancing. She received ovations of the sort seldom accorded any one in the theatre and she enjoyed high recognition and honors from royalty.

Before the World War she danced before Emperor Franz Josef of Austria and Emperor Wilhelm. King Alfonso of Spain and the King and Queen of the Belgians were among other royal personages who paid her homage. During her first appearance in Paris, Sarah Bernhardt and Mme. Duse helped to make her triumph there notable.

Upon her return to Russia, after her first American tour, in 1910, the late Czar Nicholas summoned her to the royal box and congratulated her. In the chronicles of her life, the dancer quotes the Czar as saying: "I so much regret that despite all I hear about your wonderful swan dance I have never seen it. Yet I am called one of the absolute monarchs."

Pavlova was always partial to the dance of the dying swan, and for years she kept swans in the garden of her home in Hempstead, London, so she could study their movements. The inspiration for the swan dance came first to her, she said, while watching the swans in a public park in Leningrad.

While touring in The Hague, Netherlands, Pavlova was in a train which malfunctioned and had a mild derailment. Dressed only in pajamas and a light scarf, she got out and walked the length of the train to see what had happened. Three weeks later she was dead of pneumonia, three weeks short of her 50th birthday. Reportedly, she said "If I can't dance then I'd rather be dead," and asked to hold her costume from The Swan. Her last words were "Play that last measure very softly."

In accordance with old ballet tradition, on the day she was to have next performed, the show went on as scheduled, with a single spotlight circling an empty stage where she would have been. Memorial services were held in the Russian Orthodox church in London. Anna Pavlova was cremated, and her ashes placed in a columbarium at Golders Green Crematorium, where her urn was subsequently adorned with her ballet shoes. Her remains were finally moved in 2001 to the Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow in accordance with her requests and after considerable controversy.