CLASS FRAGMENTS of MARIKA BESOBRASOVA
Class fragments of Marika Besobrasova while visiting the Australian Ballet School, in the 70's and 80's.
Marika Besobrasova was born on augus 4th 1918 in Yalta. At 2 years of age her family had to emigrate to Europe, and finally settled down in Nice, France.
Besobrasova studied at the Russian Lyceum with Yulia Sedova (student of Cecchetti and Sokolova), Lyubov Egorova (same as Sedova but also studied with Vazem and Anna Ioganson, all of them were teachers and influences of A. Vaganova) and Viktor Gsovski (also student of Sokolova).
After a successful career as dancer in Les Ballets de Monte Carlo, Grand Ballet du Marquis de Cuevas and Ballet des Champs Elysées, she opened her own school at Monte Carlo in the year 1952.
Though her dance education was mostly imperial russian, prior to Agrippina Vaganova, Besobrasova adopted the method written by Agrippina in her book, which she herself translated. She seeked to use her method, mixing it with her own influences of the imperial russian method and the french school.
In the excerpts of her classes we can see Besobrasova teaching a "temps lié at 90°" to the girls in an almost identical way as the described by Agrippina Vaganova, and also which is a sequence of movements that is almost exclusively found in her method.
Since 1975, her school changed its name to "Princess Grace Dance Academy of Classical Dance", and is one of the most reknown schools in the world.
Marika Besobrasova died on april 25th 2010.
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