Misplaced Pages

Arina Sobakina

Article snapshot taken from Wikipedia with creative commons attribution-sharealike license. Give it a read and then ask your questions in the chat. We can research this topic together.
Russian ballerina and stage actress
Arina Matveyevna Sobakina
BornArina Matveyevna Sobakina
Арина Матвеевна Собакина
c. 1762
Moscow, Russian Empire
NationalityRussian
Occupation(s)ballerina and stage actress

Arina Matveyevna Sobakina (circa 1762 – date of death unknown), was a Russian ballerina and stage actress performing as a "comic dancer". She belonged to the pioneer group of professional stage artists in Russia.

Biography

She was from an orphanage in Moscow and trained as a ballet dancer by the imperial ballet master Leopold Paradise from Vienna, which was not an uncommon background for a Russian stage artist in this period. Leopold Paradise joined the Foster House in 1778, and in 1780 he released the first students of his ballet class - seven dancers and nine dancers, among whom was Arina Sobakina.

Arina Sobakina was sent to St. Petersburg to Karl Knipper Theatre. This theater was opened by Karl Knipper, the doctor of the Foster house. Since there were not enough artists in Russia yet, he signed a contract with the Foster House to supply it with its graduates of the stage classes. Arina Sobakina, having got to the Knipper Theatre, immediately became the main comic dancer on this stage. In 1782, Ivan Dmitrevsky joined the theater. He not only headed the staging works, but also conducted acting lessons. Arina Sobakina worked in the theater under his leadership. However, the theater experienced problems because of the extremely unsatisfactory attitude of the host to the cast. As a result, the Foster House stopped supplying young artists for the theater and soon the theater ceased to exist.

On September 1, 1783, the freelance theater was included into the structure of the imperial theaters. Part of the troupe was sent to Moscow. In this last group, sent back to Moscow, was Arina Sobakina. By that time, a public theatre had also appeared in Moscow. In 1780 it was opened on Petrovka Street by Michael Maddox, an English businessman and engineer. It was named the Bolshoi Petrovsky Theatre (from which today's Bolshoi Theatre originated). Arina Sobakina also moved to the theatre. French and Italian artists worked there as choreographers and directors, but the ballet company was mainly composed of Russian artists, the graduates of the orphanage, where they were specially trained. The repertoire of the Moscow troupe was more liberal and was intended not only for the high-society public. It included many comic ballets and domestic genre scenes, close to the creativeness of Sobakina. In 1784-1785 she was one of the leading actresses of the Petrovsky Theatre. The main partner was Gavrila Raikov, her co-worker and another main actor in the ballet troupe of the Bolshoi Theatre.

Sources

  • Vsevolodsky V. (Gerngross)., History of theatrical education in Russia. - — Т. 1. - St. Petersburg, 1913.
  • Krasovskaya V., Russian Ballet Theatre from the beginning to the middle of the 19th century. - L.-M., 1958.

References

  1. Красовская В. Русский балетный театр от возникновения до середины XIX века. — Л.-М., 1958.
  2. Foster House Archived 2012-03-30 at the Wayback Machine
  3. Валерия Васильевна Носова. Балерины. Жизнь замечательных людей
  4. Самые Знамнитые Театры и Самые Знаменитые Режиссеры. Мир театра, балета, кино (Великое наследие. Т. 10)
You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in Russian. (October 2018) Click for important translation instructions.
  • Machine translation, like DeepL or Google Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Misplaced Pages.
  • Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article.
  • You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing Russian Misplaced Pages article at ]; see its history for attribution.
  • You may also add the template {{Translated|ru|Собакина, Арина Матвеевна}} to the talk page.
  • For more guidance, see Misplaced Pages:Translation.
Categories: