Recording from Jane Pritchard and Anya Sainsbury’s talk, ‘Pavlova: 20th Century Ballerina’, for CVHF 2013, Sunday 30th June 2013.

Anna Pavlova was one of the finest classical ballet dancers in history. The daughter of
a laundress, she rose to become the principal artist of the Imperial Russian Ballet and Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. With a style that paid little heed to academic rules, she is perhaps most renowned for creating the role of The Dying Swan. Here, Jane Pritchard, Curator of Dance at the V & A and Anya Sainsbury, a former principal ballerina (as Anya Linden) at the Royal Ballet discuss why Pavlova was important for the development of ballet in the west, her pioneering role and impact on the progress of dance in Britain.