I was in The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Jerome Robbins Dance Division research room looking through a box of photographs when I found it, a postcard of my mother, Irina Baronova, and Paul Petroff in Aurora’s Wedding. I looked at the picture then turned the postcard over. My heart thumped: the postcard had been written and mailed in London in the summer of 1936. The handwriting was my stepfather, Gerry Sevastianov’s, and there was a line at the bottom in my mother’s distinctive hand signed Irina Sevastianova, the one and only time I ever saw her name signed like that. They were writing in French to a friend in New York and had only been married for five months (Gerry was my mother’s first and third husband with my father in the twenty years between). The postcard had been filed as a photograph so to see my mother’s writing on the back was unexpected and emotional. It wasn’t among my mother’s papers, which I had sent to the Dance Division the previous year. I was researching in other archives that day for a book I was writing about my mother, its title was Irina Baronova and the Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo.

My mother was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, in 1919. During the Russian Revolution her parents escaped into Romania, where she had her first ballet lessons, then took her to Paris to train with Olga Preobrajenska. Balanchine saw her in Preobrajenska’s studio in 1932 and invited her to join the newly formed Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo when she was twelve years old. At the age of thirteen she danced Swan Lake partnered by Anton Dolin. She danced with the Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo from 1932-1941 and from 1941-1943 as one of two prima ballerinas with the new Ballet Theatre company, now American Ballet Theatre. My mother mostly worked with Balanchine, Massine, Nijinska, and Fokine. She retired from performing ballet in 1946. After she moved to England she became a vice president of the Royal Academy of Dance and sat on the Arts Council of Great Britain. She worked with the Festival Ballet, the Houston Ballet and the Australian Ballet, taught and lectured all over the world and was given numerous awards and an honorary doctorate.

My mother died in June 2008. She lived near my sister in Byron Bay, Australia, a beautiful but humid area where preserving anything on paper is a challenge. I talked it over with my sister and we decided that since I lived in Los Angeles, where the climate is dry, I would take on the job of sorting through the contents of our mother’s office. In September the boxes arrived, six huge moving boxes almost as tall as me. They stood in my hall just inside the front door, too heavy to move. I looked at them with mounting surprise. I had no idea Mum had so much stuff. I cut open the first box and pulled out plastic shopping bags and trash bags full of letters and photographs. After I had emptied the contents of all the boxes the hall was filled with photographs, letters, albums, scrapbooks, posters, newspaper clippings, videotapes, costume pieces, a pair of pale pink toeshoes, manuscripts and passports in manila envelopes, boxes, shopping bags, trash bags and bundles held together with elastic bands.

I carried it all upstairs to my small office where I had pinned a thin white tablecloth across the window to protect everything from the light. For the next five months I tried to identify everything and catalogue it. I worked my way through over two thousand photographs, most of them loose and undated; then I started on the letters. I kept going back to Staples to buy more and more white three-inch binders and more packets of clear sleeves to place the catalogued items in. I assembled seven binders with 1,800 photographs arranged chronologically in clear sleeves dating from 1915 through 2008, and three binders of letters from 1926 through 2008. The completed binders moved down onto my dining-room table, underneath which were my mother’s scrapbooks, albums, manuscripts, passports, videotapes, posters, newspaper clippings and the rest of it. My then eleven-year old daughter, a computer whiz who types really fast, spent hours sitting next to me typing up the Baronova Papers Catalogue, which I dictated to her page by page.

While I was arranging the photographs chronologically and identifying them, I sat on the floor with growing piles of photographs lined up on the carpet all around me. Gradually as I placed the photographs in sequence I realized that they told the story of a life in pictures-the unusually well chronicled life of a great artist. Since most of the images had never been seen before I thought that if I wrote just enough words to place them in context they could make a book. I called my sister and she agreed with me. This book would be something that our children and the rest of the family would enjoy, initially that was as far as the idea went.

By this time I had mentioned what I was doing to the acting director of the Getty Museum, David Bomford, and his assistant director, Thomas Kren, whom I met at a Getty event, and they put me in touch with a Getty board member who was also on the board of the New York Public Library. He then directed me to the curator of dance at the Jerome Robbins Dance Division, Jan Schmidt.

Jan and I discussed the possibility of my mother’s papers coming to the Dance Division, it seemed the most natural home for the archive and she was thrilled with the prospect. Knowing that I was going to make a book using many of the photographs I realized that I should make my scans before sending the photographs off to the Library.

The next step was to have the Baronova collection appraised. The Dance Division sent me a list of possible appraisers that had been used by other donors, without giving any endorsements. One of them was in Los Angeles. He looked at everything and made his report, which I sent off to Jan together with the catalog. Not long after I received back from Jan a list of the items in the catalog of interest to the Dance Division. The Dance Division doesn’t acquire textiles so those were not on their list: headdresses made out of silk and velvet, embroidered with flowers and pearls, and a Swan Lake tiara. I immediately got in touch with the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, and, after a lengthy bureaucratic process, the headdresses went to join the other costumes my mother had already given the Victoria & Albert Museum. The pale pink toe shoes I gave to the Vaganova Academy Museum in St. Petersburg the following summer. In contrast to the lengthy process of donation to the Victoria & Albert, the NYPL Dance Division was extremely responsive, and the transaction was conducted in a timely fashion.

Which meant that I had a deadline, I had to select the photographs I wanted to scan before I shipped the Dance Division the items they wanted by the agreed date. In order to make a selection I had to consider how I was going to tell my mother’s story. I decided that I couldn’t write about things that didn’t have accompanying photographs and I couldn’t include a photograph that didn’t help tell the story. The text and the photographs would be intertwined. I conceived of her life as a journey, a figurative and a literal journey, decided to divide the book into geographical chapters starting in Russia where my mother was born; followed by Romania, where my grandparents and mother escaped to during the Russian Revolution; after which would follow their travels, first as refugees to Paris, then as members of the Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo to Monte Carlo.

Next would come the company tours: America, Covent Garden, Australia, South America, and then the chapters on Ballet Theatre (now American Ballet Theatre) in Mexico and America. Last would be the chapter of life as a mother and vice-president of the Royal Academy of Dance in England. I decided to place the story in context by bookending it with a prologue and epilogue about my own journey through the memorabilia as I created the book. For the text I would alternate my voice as narrator and my mother’s voice, which I would take from her letters to me, the oral history transcript of the interview she did for the NYPL, and quotes from her autobiography when there was no other source. I also decided that I wanted to establish my mother’s repertoire and find a photograph of her in every ballet in her repertoire.

I made 350 hi-res scans of photographs that then went to the Dance Division and 50 more from photographs in my albums. I started working with a book designer and established a wonderfully in-tune back and forth with her. I would cut out copies of the photographs and paragraphs of my written text and tape them onto sheets of paper, arranging them in two page layouts. Chapter by chapter I drove them to Pasadena to hand them over and she would send me the pages she made of them in her design program via Dropbox; I would look at them on my computer, send her e mail notes of changes and tweaks and back would come the revised pages. She was inventive and had some good ideas. By trial and error we worked on the format to achieve my goals: to examine an artist’s life knowledgably, to speak to a reader who loved ballet as well as someone who didn’t know anything about it, to tell my mother’s story in a compelling way by placing the photographs correctly in the text and to show the full glory of hundreds of photographs in a fixed number of pages because I was on a budget.

I had completed the prologue and first four chapters when my phone rang. It was the executive editor in charge of Art, Architecture, Archaeology, and Classical Studies at the University of Chicago Press. She introduced herself and said “I hear you’re writing a book about your mother. Whom are you doing it for?” I told her, “My sister and myself.” “No,” she said, “I didn’t mean that, I mean which publisher are you writing the book for?” I told her, “I don’t have a publisher, and I’m not just writing it, I’m actually making the book, and I intend to finish it before showing it to a publisher.” There was a silence on the other end of the phone. “That’s very unusual” she said eventually. “Well,” I told her, “I’ve never done this before but I know how I want to do it, and I don’t want someone to tell me I can’t.” As we continued talking I learned that she had been a dancer herself and that her mother had auditioned for the Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo in America and had been offered a place in the company but her father had said no. I felt I was talking to the right person, and I agreed to send her my first few chapters. The comments I got back were good: don’t be afraid to be scholarly, don’t be afraid to use your own voice. My husband had told me to utilize my own voice more, and so had a friend who had written an acclaimed family memoir but I really didn’t want to impose myself on my mother’s story–now, I finally recognized that the narrator had to have an identity too-and another great comment: don’t limit yourself to the photos you have, if you don’t have an image go out and find it, if you talk about Balanchine show a photo of Balanchine. I looked at the list I had made of ballet images I was still missing for my mother’s repertoire (Scuola Di Ballo, La Boutique Fantasque, Orphée et Eurydice, Symphonie Fantastique, Paganini, Scheherazade, Pas de Quatre, Helen of Troy) and added to it the images of people I had talked about in the first four chapters but didn’t have photographs of (Balanchine and Rene Blum). I reached for the phone.

“Jan? It’s Victoria Tennant.” I was back at the New York Public Library Dance Division. I told Jan that I had started my book, and now I needed to do research in the Dance Division archives. I had eight chapters ahead of me and a list of missing photographs.

Doing research in the NYPL Dance Division archives is exciting because you never know what you will discover. Some of the catalogue entries are broad so you have to put on white gloves and go through every box, folder, and scrapbook that has a connection to what you are researching. This takes time because you have to examine every piece of paper and you also have to be able to recognize what you are looking at, as some of the photographs are unidentified. There are treasures on the archive shelves waiting to be discovered and information waiting to be assembled and revealed. In a newly digitalized world there is something wonderful about having to show up and put on the gloves, to be an explorer and not merely a tourist with a guidebook already in hand.

Starting out online I did my best, given the immensity of the holdings. I went onto the NYPL website, I found the Dance Division, I looked up Irina Baronova, Ballets Russes, Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo, Ballet Theatre, and American Ballet Theatre. I was looking for my missing photographs. Here is one excerpt from a finding aid in one of the many archival collections I consulted:

(S)*MGZMD 267 David Lichine/Tatiana Riabouchinska Papers, Series I b.1 f.15 photographs 1933-1959

This folder contains twenty-six years of photographs. But, how many photographs? What are they of? Are there images for every year? No way to know. Due to copyright issues most of the photographs identified in the catalogue are not online; one has to guess at any image individually listed from its description.

On June 22, 2012, I sent an e-mail to NYPL Research Help:

I am writing a book about my mother, Irina Baronova, and her work with the Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo and Ballet Theatre. I would like to include photographs of all the roles she danced. There are very few photographs that I am missing. Here are two photographs that I think I would like to include in my book, but I can’t tell from your website if they are already scanned and viewable.

Ballets that I know my mother danced in that I do not have photographs of:

• Nocturne 1933 chor. Lichine (Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo)
• La Boutique Fantasque 1934 chor. Massine (Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo)
• Paganini 1939 chor. Fokine (Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo)
• Helen of Troy 1943 chor. Fokine/Lichine (Ballet Theatre)
• Boutique Fantasque, Can Can Doll 1943 chor. Massine (Ballet Theatre)
• Gaite Parisienne 1945 chor. Massine (Massine’s Highlights)

A couple of days later, Jan Schmidt asked a Dance Division staff member, Alice Standin, to see if she could find any of the photographs I was looking for and let me know. I sent an e-mail to Alice: “Many thanks. I have tried to negotiate the NYPL website as thoroughly as I am able, but have come to this point. I am extremely grateful for your help.”

Alice responded: “It would have come to this point anyway. The only photos that are in the gallery are photos that people have already requested that were digitized or photos that were digitized for various NYPL or Dance Division projects–a small fraction of our photos. Some photos may have been digitized but do not appear in our gallery for copyright reasons. We must either have permission or own the rights. I’ll see what I can find.”

And so began a wonderful research period during which I made several trips from Los Angeles to New York, always requesting in advance what I wanted to look at, because some of the archives and materials are stored offsite and have to be brought over to the Dance Division research room. Trolleys of boxes and folders would be waiting for me when I arrived and from opening time to closing time I would sit with the white gloves on and work my way through the materials. I would advise a first time researcher to have a good meal before starting work, the six hours go past quickly and you don’t want to waste time leaving the room to eat. The most exciting discoveries for me were Serge Grigoriev's black exercise books (call number: (S) *MGZMB-Res. 78-4040) which included a complete day-by-day record of the work of the Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo company. He wrote down the rehearsal lists and performance records, the tour itineraries and which ballets were performed and who danced in them; each year he ranked the male and female dancers. The six years of USA Tour Lists left me open-mouthed. I had heard about these tours where the company lived on a train for months at a time, but to see the list of cities written out was astonishing. I copied months worth of itineraries into my notebook-one is only allowed to bring a pencil, paper, and cellphone into the research room. Another good discovery contained in those tour lists was the date of my mother's elopement with Gerry Sevastianov in Kentucky, which explained their subsequent Russian Orthodox marriage in Australia. She was three weeks shy of her seventeenth birthday in Kentucky so that first wedding was actually illegal. No wonder Gerry insisted that they have a second wedding. I don’t think that my mother ever realized this.

There was another discovery, the photographs *MGZEA no.21, *MGZEB v.5 no.370 and *MGZEA no.184 are, I believe, the only known images of Lichine's ballet Nocturne. They are rehearsal images, but there are no other images that anyone knows of. I asked the Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo dancer, Anna Volkhova, aged ninety-four, who had danced in Nocturne, if she could identify these three images and she confirmed that they are of Nocturne. She has since passed away. Alice and I found all but one of the photographs of my mother that I was searching for. In addition I discovered some other images in various archives that were perfect for my book; altogether there were 3thirty images I wanted to use. The next step was to get them scanned.

Alice’s last e-mail:

I think all the images are reproducible. As the images would be delivered in digital form you could get rid of the glue marks and other blemishes using a program like Photoshop. I will get back to you with photographer contacts if we have them; the photographer may charge a fee in addition to what the library must charge for making the scans. If there is a photographer credited and we do not have a contact for them or their estate, our Permissions Office requires that you make a good faith effort to locate a rights holder. This usually starts with an Internet search. If no rights holder can be found then you must send an account to the Permissions Office of your efforts and they will release the image.

The list of photographers’ contacts was very helpful. Some of the contacts were out of date, and as I worked my way down the list I let Alice know of any changes I found so that the Dance Division could update their contact information. Of the 335 photographs in my finished book I ended up getting 56 photographs from outside sources, 30 of those were from the archives of the NYPL Dance Division.

Once I had satisfied the NYPL Permissions Office that  I had either contacted a rights holder and got written permission to use their image or had made a good faith effort to find a rights holder and had documented my search, the photographs were released and the scans made and sent to me.

When my book was finished it was printed out on double page sheets, which I sent to the editor at the University of Chicago Press to look at. After a peer review and the board review, she told me that they wanted to publish it. Over the next year I worked with a copy editor, an index was made, and a cover designed. In October 2014 when I held the real book in my hands for the first time I completely choked up. All I could think of was how thrilled my mother would have been if she could have seen it too.

Items in the Jerome Robbins Dance Division

1. Ballet Russe de Basil clippings, Box 1, 1933 II Article title: Arc de Ballet The Pursuit of Limberness at the Barre. Library call number: *MGZRC 58 (Ballet Russe de Basil)
2. New York (City). Museum of Modern Art. Photographs: Ballet, ca. 1900-1950. v. 37, no. 3158, Library call number *MGZEB
3. David Lichine and Tatiana Riabouchinska Papers, 1920-1981, Series III: Scrapbooks, 1927-1970 Box 10, f. 2, p. 57, Library call number (S) *MGZMD 267
4. David Lichine and Tatiana Riabouchinska Papers, Series III: Scrapbooks, 1927-1970, Box 13, f. 22, p. 44 , Library call number (S) *MGZMD 267
5. David Lichine and Tatiana Riabouchinska papers, Series III: Scrapbooks, 1927-1970, Box 22, p. 15, Library call number (S) *MGZMD 267
6. Blum, René, Library call number *MGZE, no. 1
7. David Lichine and Tatiana Riabouchinska papers, Series III: Scrapbooks, 1927-1970, Box 22, p. 16, Library call number (S) *MGZMD 267
8. New York (City). Museum of Modern Art. Photographs: Ballet, ca 1900-1950 v. 29 no.1880, Library call number *MGZEB
9. Ballet Russe (de Basil), Library call number: *MGZEA, no. 21
10. New York (City). Museum of Modern Art. Photographs: Ballet, v.5 no. 370, Library call number *MGZEB
11. Dolin, Anton, #184, Library call number *MGZEA
12. Black exercise books, Library call number: (S) *MGZMB-Res. 78-4040
13. Ballet Russe de Basil clippings, Library call number *MGZRC 58
14. Baronova, Irina, Library call number *MGZEA, no. 63
15. David Lichine and Tatiana Riabouchinska papers, Library call number (S) *MGZMD 267 Series III: Scrapbooks 1927-1970, Box 18, p. 14, no. 4
16. David Lichine and Tatiana Riabouchinska papers, Library call number (S) *MGZMD 267 Series III: Scrapbooks 1927-1970, Box 18, p. 14, no. 7
17. David Lichine and Tatiana Riabouchinska papers, Library call number (S) *MGZMD 267 Series III: Scrapbooks 1927-1970, Box 18, p. 16, no. 9
18. Ballet Russe (de Basil) 8, Library call number, *MGZE
19. David Lichine and Tatiana Riabouchinska Papers, Series III: Scrapbooks, Box 22, p.14, Library call number (S) *MGZMD 267

Victoria Tennant

Victoria Tennant trained at the Central School for Speech and Drama in London before playing the title role in her first film, The Ragman's Daughter at the age of twenty-one. She has since acted extensively in film, television and theatre, receiving Golden Globe and Emmy nominations. Her book Irina Baronova and the Ballets Russes is a memoir of her mother with over 300 vintage photographs that chronicle her life and the birth of ballet in America, set against the backdrop of the Russian Revolution and World War II.