Natalia Petrovna Roslavleva René was born of an English mother and Russian father in Kiev, Russia, November 22, 1907. A graduate of the University of Moscow, she also studied ballet at the Lunacharsky Choreographic Technicum in Moscow. A leading Soviet dance historian and writer, Roslavleva was a pen name, after a famous Russian ballerina of the 19th century. Her writing on ballet began in the 1940's, writing for Ballet Today and The Dancing Times. She was a contributor for reference books such as the Italian Enciclopedia della Spettacolo and the American Dance Encyclopedia. In Russian, she wrote a history of English ballet entitled Angliiskyi Balet (1959), a book on Maya Plisetskaya (translated into English in 1956), and monographs on Takhomirov and Liepa. Her signature work was Era of the Russian Ballet (English, 1966). In 1968, she received the Prix Docteur Honoris Cause de l'Université de la Danse, Paris, for her Stanislavski and the Ballet, published in Dance Perspective, 23, in 1965. At the end of her life, her P rechistenka 20: the Isadora Duncan School in Moscow was published in Dance Perspective, 64. She died in Moscow January 3, 1977.
From the guide to the Isadora Duncan: reviews and materials relating primarily to her performances in St. Petersburg and Moscow, 1904-1905, (The New York Public Library. Jerome Robbins Dance Division.)
