Harman, Audrey., 1926-2005

Vera Volkova (1905-1975) [d.o.b. sometimes given as 1904] was a Russian ballet dancer and teacher who became highly influential as the leading authority on the Vaganova system of training outside Russia. She began her studies relatively late, with Maria Ramonova, Nicolas Legat and Agrippina Vaganova at the Akim Volynsky School of Russian Ballet [Russian Choreographic School], Petrograd/Leningrad (1920-25). Details of her early career in Russia remain obscure, but from 1925 she embarked on several tours with various ensembles to China, Japan and South East Asia, before deciding to remain in Shanghai in 1929. Here, she performed in a trio with Serge Toropov and Georgi Goncharov, and she also began to teach. With the support of her companion, the British architect Hugh Finch Williams, she opened a ballet school in Hong Kong in 1932, moving to the UK in 1936, where she and Finch Williams married the following year.

Volkova famously taught at her own studio in West Street, Central London, which became a magnet for many great dancers, including Margot Fonteyn. Volkova joined the teaching staff of The Sadler’s Wells Ballet (1943-50), where her influence on the Company’s seminal production of The Sleeping Beauty (1946) and on Ashton’s neo-Classical masterwork, Symphonic Variations (1946), was significant. In 1950 Volkova become the Director of Ballet at La Scala, Milan; just a year later she was invited to join the artistic staff of The Royal Danish Ballet in Copenhagen, where she remained for twenty eight years, until her death on 5 May 1975. Her pupils in Denmark included Erik Bruhn, Peter Martins and later, Rudolf Nureyev. She was made a Knight of Dannebrog (1956). Bibl. Alexander Meinertz, Vera Volkova - a biography, Dance Books (London, 2007)

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