Russian dancer and teacher Tamara Karsavina was BOTD in 1885. Born in Saint Petersburg, her father was a teacher and formal principal dancer at the Imperial Ballet, who initially refused to allow her to study ballet. Her mother arranged for her to take private lessons, until her father eventually agreed to teach her. She entered the Imperial Ballet School in 1894, graduating two years early so she could begin dancing professionally and support her family. She quickly became the company’s prima ballerina, admired for her beauty and faultless technique, and especially praised for her lead roles in Le Fille Mal Gardée and Le Corsaire. In 1910, impresario Sergei Diaghilev invited her to join the Ballets Russes, then resident in Paris. Working with choreographer Mikhail Fokine, she created leading roles in Le Spectre de la rose, Les Sylphides, Petrushka and The Fire Bird, frequently partnered with the company’s star dancer Vaslav Nijinsky. After turning down a marriage proposal from Fokine, she married civil servant Vasili Vasilievich Mukhin in 1907, divorcing in 1917. She is also thought to have had an affair with American socialite and writer Mercedes de Acosta. After the Russian Revolution in 1918, she moved to London with her second husband, the English diplomat Henry James Bruce, with whom she had a son. She became a renowned dance teacher, helping co-found the Association of Teachers of Operatic Dancing (later the Royal Academy of Dance) and the English Royal Ballet. Her famous pupils included Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev, whom she coached for performances of Le Spectre de la Rose. She came out of retirement in the 1930s to revive many of her famous roles for the Ballet Rambert, and worked with Frederick Ashton on his 1958 revival of La Fille Mal Gardée. Her writings include articles on technique for the journal Dancing Times, her 1930 autobiography Theatre Street and the text Classical Ballet: The Flow of Movement. She died in 1978, aged 93.