Istomina А.I., (1799-1848), ballet dancer

Categories / Art/Music, Theatre/Personalia
ISTOMINA Avdotya Ilyinichna (1799 - 1848, St. Petersburg), ballet dancer. A student of E. I. Kolosova and C. Didelot, she graduated from the Petersburg Theatre School in 1815. She danced in the Imperial Troupe at St. Petersburg's Bolshoy Theatre until 1836. After dancing Galatea's part in Acis and Galatea choreographed by Didelot in 1816, she became the leading ballet dancer in St. Petersburg. Istomina's repertoire included key tragic, comic, and lyric parts in Didelot's ballets, such as Vain Precaution, Zephyr and Flora, Prisoner of the Caucasus, Alceste or Hercules Descending into Hades, etc. A very gifted actress and perfect dancer, she was poetised by Pushkin, "Then suddenly she's off, and there she's up and flying through the air like a feather before Aeolian breezes". She lived at 9/16 Teatralnaya Square. She was buried at Bolsheokhtinskoe Cemetery (the headstone has not been preserved).

Reference: Эльяш Н. И. Авдотья Истомина. Л., 1971.

G. N. Dobrovolskaya. Didelot Charles Louis Frederic
Istomina Avdotya Ilyinichna
Kolosova Evgeniya Ivanovna
Pushkin Alexander Sergeevich
Teatralnaya Square/Saint Petersburg, city, house 16/9
Красовская В. М. Русский балетный театр от возникновения до середины XIX века. Л.; М., 1958
Эльяш Н. И. Авдотья Истомина. Л., 1971 Theatre College