The insurgence of contemporary modern dance not withstanding, in 1921 the famous ballerina Anna Pavlova made her first tour to Japan and her performances did much to develop Japanese audiences’ interest in ballet. Pavlova’s art transcended the dance world; her appearance was viewed as a cultural event and Japanese audiences were impressed by her famous solo, The Dying Swan, which also influenced Japanese traditional dance and Kabuki theater artists. Pavlova showed Japanese audiences that ballet was a legitimate Western art form at a time when it was thought of only as acrobatic display (often referred to disparagingly as “toe dance”). Unfortunately, Anna Pavlova did not remain in Japan long or teach ballet, which could have helped classical Western dance find its footing much more quickly.
During this period, those who contributed to the development of ballet in Japan—those who were responsible for improving the country’s access to good dance training—were mainly Russian dancers who defected to Japan because of the Russian Revolution. Among them was a ballerina named Elena Pavlova (1897-1941), the “mother of Japanese ballet,” who cultivated dancers and raised standards. Pavlova was born to an aristocratic family in Tiflis (present-day Tbilisi), in the Caucasus. She began ballet training in Kiev under Klemlakova, an instructor from the St. Petersburg Imperial Ballet Academy, studied local folk dances in Tiflis, and performed at a young age on the stage of the Kiev Opera House.
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Elena Pavlova in two photographs, c. mid-1920s. Photographer not identified.
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While Pavlova was on a performance tour in Finland, shortly after she started her dance career, the Russian Revolution broke out. Her aristocratic family was forced to immigrate to Japan in 1919, via Shanghai. During her exile in Japan, Elena performed at theaters in Yokohama and other cities. (Interestingly, Elena Pavlova performed The Dying Swan in Japan around the same time that Anna Pavlova did, but the response to her dancing was overshadowed by the attention lavished on the more famous dancer.) In 1925 she founded the Elena Pavlova Company, and in 1927 opened her ballet school at Shichirigahama in Kamakura city. Her pupils included pioneer figures of Japanese ballet such as Hiroshi Shimada (who went on to become president of the Japan Ballet Association), Chieko Hattori, Yusaku Azuma, and Akiko Tachibana.
Besides Elena Pavlova, other exiled Russian dancers who contributed to Japanese ballet education were Olga Sapphire (note 2), who taught at the Nihon Theater (Nichigeki), and Lujinski, who had been invited to teach at the Takarazuka Theatre, in Tokyo. According to Maki, the influence of Sapphire and Lujinski’s teaching was limited to their respective theaters. Sapphire, however, who learned ballet under the famous Semyonov at the Leningrad National Ballet Academy and had danced leading roles there, influenced the development of Japanese ballet in later years. Momoko Tani and Mikiko Matsuyama, both directors of their own ballet companies, as well as Akemi Matsuo, were trained under Sapphire.
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