Prodigy Prized Love Over Dance

Sydney Morning Herald

Thursday July 3, 2008

Valerie Lawson

IRINA BARONOVA

1919-2008

AS A child, she was nicknamed "bouboule", meaning little ball or bubble. And with her bright blue eyes and bubbly personality, Irina Baronova lived up to the affectionate name all her life. Her technical ability and inherent artistry took her to the top of the hierarchical world of ballet.

She joined the Ballets Russes de Monte-Carlo during its formative years in the early 1930s, and at 14 was regarded as a child prodigy. Along with two other teenage dancers, she became part of a promotable trinity.

The co-director of the company, Colonel Wassily de Basil, needed to market it in Europe and the publicity surrounding the trio was a powerful way to do so. He was fortunate that, during a London season by the company, the dance writer Arnold Haskell christened Baronova, Tamara Toumanova and Tatiana Riabouchinska as "the baby ballerinas" and the label stuck.

Baronova's stage career was relatively short. She retired aged 27 when she married her second husband, Laurence Olivier's agent, Cecil Tennant.

After Tennant's death, however, she re-dedicated her life to ballet, assisting the Royal Academy of Dance, teaching ballet and mime, and speaking at many events about her life with the Ballets Russes and Ballet Theatre, now known as American Ballet Theatre.

Irina Mikhailovna Baronova, who has died aged 89, was born in Petrograd, now St Petersburg, the daughter of naval lieutenant Michael Baronov and his wife, Lydia. Late in 1920, the family moved to Romania where her mother, who had dreamed of a ballet career, took her to ballet lessons.

It was not until Baronova saw a performance by the Russian ballerina Tamara Karsavina that she understood the art form. Her teacher recommended advanced training with a more experienced teacher, so the family moved to Paris, where she was taught by one of the former ballerinas of Czarist Russia, Olga Preobrajenska, who also taught Toumanova.

Baronova made her debut at the Paris Opera in 1930 and two years later was taken into the Ballets Russes by the company's ballet master and choreographer, George Balanchine.

Baronova created roles in Leonide Massine's ballets Les Presages, Jeux d'enfants and Le Beau Danube and in Bronislava Nijinska's Les Cent Baisers, and danced in major ballets by Michel Fokine and in Balanchine's Cotillon and La Concurrence. At the age of 14, she danced as Odette in Swan Lake, partnered by Anton Dolin, who became her favourite stage partner.

In 1936, aged 17, Baronova eloped with the much older German (Jerry) Sevastianov, a Russian and a nephew of Konstantin Stanislavsky, who started as a general factotum for de Basil.

They had a second church marriage in Sydney in 1938 when Baronova was on tour with one of the de Basil touring companies. In Australia, she was feted as a glamorous star, her image used to sell products such as make-up.

Sevastianov and Baronova left the de Basil company in 1939 when Baronova took a role in the film Florian, then joined the newly formed Ballet Theatre in the US. She also toured the US with a company run by Massine called Ballet Russe Highlights.

Baronova divorced Sevastianov and gradually lost focus on her ballet career. She worked at Radio City Music Hall, in a play and a musical comedy, then went to Britain to appear in the thriller A Bullet In The Ballet.

In London she met the agent Cecil Tennant. He proposed, on the condition that she give up her ballet career.

Three years ago she was asked if she would do that again.

Baronova replied: "Yes, I would, because I had the most blissful, wonderful 18 years, with the most wonderful husband who made me very happy. We had three children [Victoria, who was married to the actor Steve Martin, and now works in film production, Irina, a photographer, and Robert, a writer], a wonderful home and family life and that is the end of it all. It was the most precious thing in life. If I had never had children, I would be a miserable old bag by now."

In 1967, Tennant was driving near their home on an English country road when his car crashed into a tree, killing him and injuring Irina and Robert.

Later Baronova resumed her relationship with Sevastianov and was with him when he died in 1974.

Baronova returned to her ballet life when Margot Fonteyn, as president of the Royal Academy of Dance, asked her to conduct a training course for teachers.

In 1992, she returned to Russia to help the Maryinsky Theatre with an archival project and eight years ago, visited her daughter Irina, in Bryon Bay, where she decided to settle.

Baronova lost much of her eyesight but wrote her autobiography, Irina: Ballet, Life And Love, in long hand and continued to speak at events, most recently, five weeks ago, in Adelaide at a symposium on the Ballets Russes tours of Australia.

Irina Baronova is survived by her children, six grandchildren and a great-granddaughter.

© 2008 Sydney Morning Herald

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