Reflections: Serafina Astafieva
As part of Voices of British Ballet’s Reflections series Jane Pritchard, former curator of Dance at the Victoria and Albert Museum, talks to Patricia Linton, founder and director of Voices of British Ballet, about the Russian ballerina and teacher Serafina Astafieva.
Born in St Petersburg in 1876, Serafina Astafieva became an important teacher in London in the early years of the 20th century. She ran a school on the King’s Road in Chelsea. Her pupils included Anton Dolin, Alicia Markova and Margot Fonteyn.
Reflections is a collection of personal responses to the topics and ideas that our archives highlight. These illuminating recordings sit alongside the Grace Notes section of our website. Grace Notes is a nod to the musical practice of embellishment, and also to British composer Arthur Bliss, who used the words to describe his “Grace Notes on Ballet” in Peter Noble’s 1949 book, British Ballet.
Dancers spend their careers engaging with the ideas of choreographers. Thus, having a colourful and enriched perspective on the world around them is essential. Ballet does not live in a bubble. These embellishments, both written on our website, and recorded in this special Reflections series, show the wider social and artistic context from which ballet springs and within which it thrives.
First published: August 18, 2026
Biography
Born in St Petersburg in 1876, Serafina Astafieva became an important teacher in London in the early years of the 20th century. Her pupils included Anton Dolin, Alicia Markova and Margot Fonteyn. Astafieva graduated into the corps de ballet of the Maryinsky Theatre in St Petersburg in 1895 from the Imperial Ballet School. In 1896 she married the character dancer Jozef Kshessinsky, brother of the ballerina Mathilde Kschessinska. From 1909 until 1911 Astafieva danced with Serge Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, appearing in its first London season. She danced briefly for the Imperial Ballet in Budapest in 1914 before settling in London, where she was introduced by her friend Ezra Pound to the poet TS Eliot, who pictured her as the seductive Grishkin in his early poem Whispers of Immortality. Pound himself introduced her in his Canto 79 as conserving ‘the tradition from Byzance’. The artistic atmosphere of London, and her place within it, is suggested by these poetic references. Astafieva’s school was based in The Pheasantry on King’s Road and she died in London in 1934.
You may also like...
Pauline Clayden
Rick Guest
