Anna Pavlova in one of her many costumes in 1926. This one would be now fitting for the now, Art Deco Napier.
Anna Pavlova in one of her many costumes in 1926. This one would be now fitting for the now, Art Deco Napier.
The story goes that a Wellington chef created and named the Pavlova dessert in honour of Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova (1881‒1931) who toured New Zealand in 1926.
The right to claim the dessert as being created first in New Zealand or Australia has raged for many years. The Aussies concedethe Kiwis named it Pavlova, but that they created it.
Recent research, however, indicates the dessert was created in Europe in the 1800s, and travelled to America with German immigrants, and with the development of the crank eggbeater, recipes involving meringues flourished.
It was easy to see how a chef would want to name a dessert after Anna Pavlova – New Zealanders fell in love with the beauty and artistry of the ballerina.
She became the principal ballerina of the Imperial Russian Ballet in 1906, only seven years after entering the company. The Dying Swan created for her in 1905, was to be her signature role.
Tours abroad with the Imperial Russian Ballet followed in 1907 and 1908.
Anna would join the independent company Ballet Russe in 1909 after an invitation from Sergei Diaghilev, who was a Russian art critic, patron, and founder of Ballet Russe, which performed its opening season in Paris. The ballet company would tour overseas and visit the United Kingdom (where she made her home from 1912) and the United States.
In 1911, she formed her own ballet company, leaving Ballet Russe, and her husband Victor Dandré would organise her tours.
Great excitement was to be had when it was announced Anna would tour New Zealand in 1926 and included would be two performances in the Napier Municipal Theatre (this theatre was in the same place as the present one and destroyed in the 1931 Hawke's Bay earthquake). Many in Napier were shocked she would stop off there. Hastings, however, was not amused.
Billed as "The Greatest Dancer of All Times" by promoters J C Williamson, Anna would travel by a special train from Auckland, where she arrived in May 1926, to Palmerston North and then on to Napier.
Travelling with her was the male dancer Laurent Novikoff, 50 other artists and a full "grand operatic orchestra".
The country would soon be gripped with Anna Pavlova fever.
She wasn't shy of giving out tips to the general population during her frequent press coverage, including saying "walking is the very best exercise for the whole of the body".
Before her arrival in Napier, it was noted by the Daily Telegraph, that a "sight reminiscent of a West End theatre entrances was witnessed when a queue formed in order to make sure of a seat in the 'gods' ". As the day went on, the queue, which had people sitting on camp stools and empty benzine (petrol) cans, stretched past the former Napier Fire Station building (still existing) in Tennyson St.
Anna's performances were on June 8 and 9.
Accommodation for Anna and her troupe in Napier was at the Masonic Hotel, but there apparently was little evidence of her being there. She had all her meals in her room, and her dancers "lead a very quiet life during the day, eating sparingly, exercising and resting at fixed periods, to enable them to carry out their strenuous performances on the stage".
Anna "motored" to the house of merchant Mr Kinross White one of the afternoons she was here and spent a few hours there and was "delighted with the New Zealand surroundings".
The performances were greeted with "prolonged applause" from a packed and "enthusiastic audience" over what was described as "another personal triumph for Pavlova" and "the whole performance was flawless from the rise of the curtain to the fall".
In 1931, she developed double pneumonia while on tour, and died in The Hague on January 23.
Her last words were reported as "Get my swan costume ready".
• Signed copies of Michael Fowler's Historic Hawke's Bay book are available from the Hastings Community Art Centre, Russell St South, Hastings for $65.
• Michael Fowler FCA (mfhistory@gmail.com) is a chartered accountant, contract researcher and writer of Hawke's Bay's history.
