Mathilde Kschessinska Biography and Film ‘mathilde’

Mathilde Kshesinskaya was an eminent Russian ballerina and was born to an artistic family. Her grandfather was a famous violin player, singer and actor and both her parents were ballet dancers. At the age of eight, Matilda enrolled in the Imperial Theatre School, where her brother and sister already studied. She went on to become the prima ballerina assoluta of the Imperial Russian Ballet. Her life and artistic career were closely linked to the Czar’s family. The day of her graduation exam became a turning point in her life. The exam was traditionally attended by Czar Alexander III, the Empress and the successor to the Russian throne, the future Emperor Nicholas II. After the show, the Emperor told her: “Be the fame and decoration of our ballet!”. This event also spearheaded the relationship between the ballerina and Nicholas II. A secret diary revealed last year mentions the relationship and the fact that she was carrying the emperor’s child which was lost in a carriage accident. Their two-year relationship ended with Nicholas” engagement to his future wife, Alexandra.

The 2017 film “Mathilde” tells the story of this affair and it stormed up controversy in Russia. This is because the Czar and his family who were massacred in 1918 are considered saints. Mathilde was ambitious and eager to maintain her close relationship with the Romanovs. She subsequently began a long time affair with Grand Duke Sergei Mikhailovich of Russia, Nicholas and Andrei’s first cousin once removed. As she was not in love with Sergei, but enjoyed his company and protection, Mathilde pursued a relationship with Grand Duke Andrei, the third Romanov to become involved with her. By July 1900, they became lovers, traveling together that summer to Biarritz and Paris and later to several Italian cities, including Venice, Padua, Florence and Rome. The identity of the father of her son remained disputed. However, she married Duke Andrei in 1921 and lived in France with him.

Dancing was her greatest passion from her childhood. She amazed her colleagues by her fantastic obsession with work, spending hours at the bar. She was the first Russian dancer to perform 32 fouettés, a quick whipping movement of the raised leg usually accompanying a pirouette.On stage she was irresistibly charming and feminine. Her dancing was a combination of the technically irreproachable Italian style and the lyricism of the Russian school. From her father, Kshesinskaya inherited a talent for pantomime and dramatic interpretation. Her repertoire included among others, Fairy Dragee in The Nutcracker, Odette-Odile in Swan Lake, Pakhita, Esmeralda, and Princess Aspicia in The Pharaoh’s Daughter.After the October Revolution she left Russia with Grand Duke Andrei Vladimirovich. Thanks to her school in Paris she presented a generation of internationally famous dancers, names as Margaret (Margo) Fonteyn and Pamela May. She died at the age of 99 in 1971 and is buried at the Parisian cemetery Ste-Geneviève-des-Bois.Matilda F. Kshesinskaya is not only a synonym of Russian ballet at the turn of the 20th century, but also was a significant personality in the life of high society and culture of St. Petersburg in the last decades of the Russian Empire.