History
The first recorded use of the title as an official rank was in 1894, when French ballet master Marius Petipa bestowed it on Italian ballerina Pierina Legnani. He considered her to be the supreme leading ballerina in all of Europe. The second ballerina to be given the title was Legnani's contemporary Mathilde Kschessinska. Petipa, however, did not agree that she should hold such a title; although an extraordinary ballerina, he felt that she obtained the title primarily via her connections with the Imperial Russian court.
The only Soviet ballerinas to hold the title were Galina Ulanova and Maya Plisetskaya. The Swiss-born American Eva Evdokimova became recognised as a prima ballerina assoluta following guest appearances with the Kirov Ballet in the 1970s, when she was named as such by the company ballet mistress, Natalia Dudinskaya. The title was later recognised by a vote of the German Senate. Other dancers awarded the title include Anneli Alhanko from Sweden, Alicia Alonso from Cuba, Alessandra Ferri from Italy and Alicia Markova and Margot Fonteyn from England. The only French dancer to hold the title is Yvette Chauviré who was described by Rudolph Nureyev as a "legend". Nureyev also referred to the American ballerina Cynthia Gregory as America's prima ballerina assoluta, however this has never been formally acknowledged. Another not to hold the title is the great Anna Pavlova, probably the best known ballerina in history.
In South Africa, the only ballerina granted the title prima ballerina assoluta (1984) was Phyllis Spira (1943–2008). Since Evdokimova is generally viewed as an international rather than an American dancer and the U.S. has no process for designation of a prima ballerina assoluta, the title for an American ballerina dancing for an American company is frequently considered to have belonged to Cynthia Gregory with American Ballet Theatre. Sylvie Guillem as well as Darcey Bussell at The Royal Ballet, London, are considered by some to belong in the league of assolutas and both were, until their retirement from ballet, principal guests artists of the Royal Ballet, which is an honorary title roughly equivalent to the rank of Prima Ballerina.
Read more about this topic: Prima Ballerina Assoluta
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“I am ashamed to see what a shallow village tale our so-called History is. How many times must we say Rome, and Paris, and Constantinople! What does Rome know of rat and lizard? What are Olympiads and Consulates to these neighboring systems of being? Nay, what food or experience or succor have they for the Esquimaux seal-hunter, or the Kanaka in his canoe, for the fisherman, the stevedore, the porter?”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“the future is simply nothing at all. Nothing has happened to the present by becoming past except that fresh slices of existence have been added to the total history of the world. The past is thus as real as the present.”
—Charlie Dunbar Broad (1887–1971)
“The foregoing generations beheld God and nature face to face; we, through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe? Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs?”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)