18.00 USD
Natalia (also known by the diminutive form, Natasha, or Natacha), Vladimirovna Trouhanova was born into a theatrical family in Kiev, in 1885. According to an interview she gave in 1911, her parents were of French, Polish, Serbian and Bohemian extraction. The family left Kiev when she was one year old, and until she was thirteen, she "lived like a nomad, traveling through all the countries of Europe." (interview in Comoedia, 1911).
At thirteen, she began formal study in Moscow, first in acting, and then dance. When she arrived in France, in the early 1900s, she, like many emigre performers, found work in the music halls. In 1905, in Monte Carlo, she was cast in the role of a Hungarian Gypsy girl, in Jean Lorrain's "La Mariska," an opera ballet, and her career caught fire. Most of the images we come across of La Trouhanova are in Gypsy garb, probably in costume for La Mariska.
Although she gained her initial fame as a dancer, some reviews of the time suggest that her skills lay more in the area of interpretive dance, as a soloist, than in classic ballet, and applaud her pantomime, and acting, particularly as a tragedienne.
She also appeared in a number of early silent films. After the outbreak of WWI, she married a Russian count, and retired, at least temporarily, from the stage. In the 1920s, she returned to dancing for a time, and then some years later, she and her husband returned to (then Soviet) Russia, and later in her life, she worked as a translator of Russian political tracts, some by Stalin, himself.
Perhaps because her career was a short one, it is difficult to find, online, much information about la Trouhanova personally, apart from one source, where we were extremely lucky. All of our bio information came from a google books extract of "Legacies of Twentieth-Century Dance" by Lynn Garafola, published by Wesleyan University Press in 2005. We have a link below to that extract. Beginning on page 148, there is a great deal of information on Natalia Trouhanova. Of particular interest, though too lengthy to go into here, is her relationship (quite rocky), with Nijinsky and Diaghlev, well worth reading, as well as Ms. Garafola's insights into the state of the art, and business, of dance, in that place and time.
http://books.google.com/books?id=7gIDy6ait3IC&pg=PA156&lpg=PA156&dq=trouhanova&source=bl&ots=P4TuEpuJj9&sig=d7q1rB1xOl7Ldk_2z-WGMviLrT8&hl=en&sa=X&ei=2SiMUpLsFuip2QXSyoDwDg&ved=0CGEQ6AEwDA#v=onepage&q=trouhanova&f=false
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