The Original Queen of the Fouettés: Pierina Legnani
Milan, 30 September 1863 – Milan, 15 November 1930
Pierina Legnani, prima ballerina assoluta, Mariinsky Theatre, 1896. She is costumed for the first act of the ballet La Perle (choreography by Marius Marius Petipa, composer Riccardo Drigo).
One of the scariest moments in the classical ballet repertoire happens in Swan Lake. Prince Siegfried has turned twenty-one. He is supposed to choose his future bride at a ball given in his honour, but he has sworn eternal love to the enchanted Swan Princess Odette, who was turned into a white swan by the evil sorcerer Rothbart. Rothbart comes to the ball with his daughter Odile – looking exactly like Odette (she is danced by the same dancer), except that she is dressed in black. The culmination of Odile’s seductive pas de deux with the gullible prince are the infamous 32 fouettés: a series of 32 consecutive turns performed at centre stage in one spot. As the ballerina prepares, she knows that everyone “in the know” will be counting her turns and watching whether she is really staying in the same place. No pressure.
Many dancers or dance students have cursed this stunt, maybe without knowing whom they should hold responsible. The first ballerina to turn 32 consecutive fouettés was the Italian ballerina Pierina Legnani, born on 30 September 1863 in Milan, Italy. Legnani was appointed prima ballerina at La Scala, but the dancer moved to St. Petersburg in 1893 after successful guest appearances in Paris, London and Brussels.
The “Italian Invasion”
In the 1880s and 1890s, St. Petersburg’s ballet lovers adored Italian ballerinas. It was the custom to invite foreign stars to the Mariinsky. St. Petersburg was a popular destination for Italian ballerinas: there were much greater creative opportunities for dancers in Russia because of the powerful patronage of the imperial ballet companies by the Russian court. In Italy, opera was much more popular than ballet and the art form had declined to a form of entertainment focusing on gymnastic tricks.
Italian ballerinas were famous for their steely pointe technique and their ability to perform difficult turns on point. French choreographer Marius Petipa was using the remarkable technique of the Italian ballerinas to push the boundaries of ballet choreography at the Mariinsky. He created some of his most iconic ballerina roles on them: Carlotta Brianza was the first Princess Aurora in his ballet The Sleeping Beauty and Legnani created the leading ballerina roles in the Mariinsky’s Swan Lake (1895) and Raymonda (1898).
32 Fouettés
Legnani is famous for being the first ballerina to perform 32 consecutive fouettés on point. Her signature step became the main technical challenge for all ballerinas performing the part of Odile in Swan Lake. Legnani first performed her 32 fouettés in a performance of Aladdin at the Alhambra in London in 1892. She astounded Russian balletomanes when she performed her 32 fouettés in Moscow in 1893, leading to an invitation as guest star to St. Petersburg’s Mariinsky Theatre. She stayed for eight years.
France vs. Italy
The future Ballets Russes ballerina Tamara Karsavina was a ballet student when Legnani was the star of the Mariinsky. In her memoirs, she described Legnani: “By no means pretty and rather short of stature, she possessed great charm and grace; all these qualities, together with marvellous brilliance of execution, silenced all the antagonists of the Italian school.” Until that point, the French school of classical ballet had been the only accepted school in St. Petersburg. Its aristocratic elegance was seen as superior to the acrobatics of the Italian school. The Imperial Theatre School now decided to also incorporate elements of the Italian school in its training program. Former star dancer Enrico Cecchetti was given one of the senior classes.
Fouetté Fever
Legnani inspired the Russian dancers to up their technical game. According to Karsavina, the students idealised her virtuosity and her “robust, compact figure.” Karsavina remembers the time when only Legnani was able to perform the fouettés: “The step was not unlike an acrobatic exercise and its presentation savours of the circus, by the deliberate suspense preceding it. Legnani walked to the middle of the stage and took an undisguised preparation. The conductor, his baton raised, waited. Then a whole string of vertiginous pirouettes, marvellous in their precision and brilliant as diamond facets, worked the whole audience into ecstasies. . .. All the girls, big and small, constantly tried to do the 32 turns. In the evenings on the ‘other side’ one constantly saw figures like turning Dervishes wherever a mirror was available. We turned in the dancing-rooms, turned in the dressing-room, turned in the dormitory, tumbling down after a few turns and beginning again.”
Russian Competition
The Mariinsky honoured Legnani’s technical brilliance and artistry by appointing her prima ballerina assoluta. There was only one ballerina who also received this official honour: Mathilda Kschessinskaya, the first Russian ballerina to master Legnani’s 32 fouettés. Legnani was first invited to the Mariinsky in 1893, and the theatre extended her contract for eight years, despite the growing opposition of the ambitious and glamorous Kschessinskaya, mistress of Tsarevich Nikolai (later the last tsar of Russia) and then of Grand Duke Andrei.