1912 – Anna Pavlova buys Ivy House and settles in London

Anna Pavlova  was born in St Petersburg in 1881, and entered the Imperial Ballet School in 1891.  In 1897 she first danced on the Maryinsky stage, and graduated in 1899.  She was accorded ballerina status in 1906, the year when she also danced in Moscow and began a famous and long-lasting partnership with Mikhail Mordkin. In 1907 Mikhail Fokine  created Pavlova’s  famous Dying Swan solo, with which she became indissolubly linked.

Pavlova began touring abroad in 1908, partnered first by Adolph Bolm and then by Nicholas Legat. In 1909 she was Serge Diaghilev’s first ballerina for his Ballets Russes in Paris. She made her debuts in London and New York in 1910, and in 1912 she bought Ivy House in London, which became her permanent home.