Ida Rubinstein

Ida Rubinstein Ида Рубинштейн
Ida Rubinstein in 1912
Born	Ida Lvovna Rubinstein (1883-10-03)3 October 1883 Kharkov, Kharkov Governorate, Russian Empire
Died	20 September 1960(1960-09-20) (aged 76) Vence, France
Occupation(s)	Dancer, actress
Years active	1908–1939

Ida Lvovna Rubinstein (

Ida's grandfather, Ruvim (Roman) Rubinstein, had been a successful sugar trader in Kharkov. He moved to Saint Petersburg, where he founded the company Roman Rubinstein & Sons with his two sons, Lev (Leon) and Adolf (Anton).[5] The family multiplied their investment many times over, becoming millionaires by the time Ida was born. The family expanded to own several banks, including the First Bank of Kharkov, sugar mills and breweries.^[4]

The family donated large sums of money to charities, particularly the arts. Lev and Adolf were both well educated; they regularly hosted prominent intellectuals and artists in their home. Adolf's son Iosif became a successful pianist who studied under Franz Liszt.^[4]

Her mother died when Ida was very young, and in 1892, her father died in Frankfurt, leaving her a vast fortune. In 1893, the 8-year-old Ida was sent to Saint Petersburg to live with her aunt, socialite "Madame" Gorvits (Horwitz). Rubinstein grew up in her aunt's mansion on the city's famed Promenade des Anglais, where she was given the best education. She became fluent in English, French, German and Italian. When she became interested in Ancient Greece, a Greek professor was invited to tutor her in Saint Petersburg.

She was also given the best instruction in music, dance and theatre, including lessons from instructors from the Russian imperial theatres. She lacked natural dance ability, but she worked constantly on her posture, movements and pirouettes. Eventually, secretly intent on going on stage herself, she went to Paris under the guise of continuing her education.^[4]

Professional years

In Paris, Rubinstein began her career as an actress, appearing on stage in various stages of "indecent" garb. The news reached Saint Petersburg and the ears of her conservative Orthodox family. While it was perfectly respectable for the upper class to be seen at the theatre, being an actress was no different from being a prostitute in the eyes of her horrified relatives. Her brother-in-law, a Parisian doctor named Lewinsohn (Levinson), had her declared legally insane in order to commit her to a mental asylum to save the family's honor.^[4]

Her family in Kharkov and Saint Petersburg, unhappy with her being in an asylum, demanded she be released and sent home. Once in Saint Petersburg, she was chaperoned at all times by her governess, as was customary for an unmarried young woman of her social class. To earn her freedom and right to control her fortune, she married her first cousin Vladimir Gorvits, who was madly in love with her and allowed her to travel and perform.^[4]

She had, by the standard of Russian ballet, little formal training. Tutored by

Rubinstein left the Ballets Russes in 1911.[6]

Rubinstein companies

After the First World War, Rubinstein appeared in a number of plays, and in Staat's Istar at the Paris Opera in 1924. She also played the leading role in the 1921 silent film La Nave based on D'Annunzio's play of the same name and directed by his son.^[7]

Between 1928 and 1929, she directed her own company in Paris with

Nijinska. The repertoire also included The Firebird (L'Oiseau de Feu) with music by Stravinsky, and choreography by Michel Fokine; this had been one of the most sensational creations for the Ballets Russes. The company was revived in 1931 and 1934, with new works. She closed the company in 1935, and gave her last performance in the play Jeanne d'Arc au bûcher in Paris, 1939.^[6]

Rubinstein often staged free ballet events and continued to dance until the start of the Second World War.

Later life

Rubinstein is not considered to be in the top tier of ballerinas; she began her training too late for that to have been possible. She did, however, have tremendous stage presence and was able to act. She was also a significant patron and she tended to commission works that suited her abilities, works that mixed dance with drama and stagecraft. In 1934, the French government awarded her the

Roman Catholicism.^[8]

In 1940, she left France during the

Stern Gang in late 1944.^[9] She returned to France after the war, living finally at Les Olivades in Vence

.

Rubinstein lived the final 10 years of her life in relative quiet.[10] She died in 1960 in Vence, France, and is buried nearby.

Images and paintings

Rubinstein was much celebrated in art. Her portrait by

Antonio de la Gandara and Jacques-Émile Blanche. Costume designer Léon Bakst created numerous images of Rubinstein in various roles. Rubinstein did not like long sittings and earned the reputation of being a difficult subject. For this reason, Blanche and others preferred to work from photographs.^[11]

Rubinstein was

bisexual,^[12] and in 1911 she began a three-year affair with the painter Romaine Brooks, who created several striking portraits, including one of the dancer as a nude model for Venus. Brooks' portraits were based on "an extraordinary series of photographs taken by Brooks at the time".^[13]

Brooks explained Rubinstein's allure to her audiences and artists as follows:

It was Ida Rubinstein's elusive quality that fascinated. She expressed an inner self that had no particular denomination. Her beauty belonged to those mental images that demand manifestation, and whatever period she represented she became its image. In reality she was the crystallization of a poet's image, a painter's vision, and as such she possessed further significance ... It was her gift for impersonating the beauty of every époque, that marked Ida Rubinstein as unique.[11]

See also

• Place des États-Unis
• List of Russian ballet dancers

Notes

1. ISBN 978-0-19-966086-5
   .
2. ^ "Treasures of Ballets Russes". Government of Moscow. Archived from the original on 4 March 2016. Retrieved 10 August 2015.
3. ISBN 978-0-7546-0402-0
   .
4. ^
   ISBN 9785457589698
   . Retrieved 10 August 2015.
5. ISBN 978-0-300-13713-2
   . Retrieved 10 August 2015.
6. ^ ^{a b} Crane, Debra & Mackrell, Judith 2000. The Oxford Dictionary of Dance. Oxford University Press, Oxford.
7. ISBN 3110951940
8. ^ Web page on her later life
9. ^ Joe Joyce; The Guinnesses Poolbeg Press, Dublin 2009, chapter 11.
10. Jewish Electronic Encyclopedia
    . Retrieved 10 August 2015.
11. ^
    ISBN 978-1135959210
    .
12. ISBN 0-385-03469-5
    .
13. ^ Bentley, Toni Sisters of Salome. 2002. New Haven: Yale University Press, p146.

Additional references

• Toni Bentley (2005) Sisters of Salome, Bison Books,
  ISBN 0-8032-6241-8
• Michael de Cossart, Ida Rubinstein (1885–1960): A Theatrical Life, Liverpool University Press,
  ISBN 0-85323-146-X
• Vicki Woolf, The Story of Ida Rubinstein: Dancing in the Vortex, harwood academic publishers, 2000,
  ISBN 90-5755-087-3
• La nave (directed by Gabriellino d'Annunzio) on the
  Internet Movie Database

External links

• Romaine Brooks' La Venus triste with Ida Rubinstein as model
• Ida Rubenstein pages at theatrex.net

Archives at
Location Library of Congress Source Ida Rubinstein collection, 1909–2000
How to use archival material

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