Tamara Toumanova (1919–1996). Ballerina and actress of Russian extraction

Tamara Toumanova was born in 1919 near Shanghai in a railway car, whilst her parents were leaving Russia for France. She studied ballet with Olga Preobrajenska in Paris and danced in a gala concert by Anna Pavlova when she was six years old, followed with another gala at the Paris Opéra when she was nine. In 1932, when Toumanova was just 12 years of age, George Balanchine engaged her for Colonel de Basil’s Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo. Along with Irina Baronova and Tatiana Riabouchinska, the three became what Arnold Haskell referred to as the ‘Baby Ballerinas’.

Toumanova had many ballets created for her, notably by Balanchine and Léonide Massine. She briefly joined Balanchine’s Les Ballets 1933 but returned to her former company and toured extensively with them around the world. Known as the ‘Black Pearl of Russian ballet” because of her dark hair, between 1944 and 1970 Toumanova appeared in six Hollywood films and danced as a guest artist with many ballet companies, including London Festival Ballet in 1952 and 1954. Tamara Toumanova died in California in 1996.