Saturday, April 13, 2013

Plaque for Hammersmith-based Russian ballet legend - Fulham Chronicle

Dancers remember Hammersmith resident dancer Nicolai Legat Russian dancer Nicolai Legat with Anna Pavlova BARONS Court is certainly a haven for both creative and brilliant. While studying law in London Mahatma Gandhi, the internationally famous chief of the Indian freedom movement, was a citizen as was civil rights activist Marcus Garvey and with the celebrated London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts situated in Talgarth Road, several stars of stage and screen also have called the area home. And now this week, another popular person has been commemorated. On Tuesday a plaque was presented outside Colet House, enjoying the life of Nicolai Legat among the great Russian ballet stars of pre-revolutionary Russia. Commissioned by Hammersmith and Fulhamas Historic Buildings Group, the blue memento was unmasked by mayor of Hammersmith and Fulham, Councillor Belinda Donovan. Huddled into the small dance studio was a group of great retired ballerinas and artists from the Royal Ballet and Legat Society who had convened to mark the occasion. Born in 1869, Legat joined the ballet company of the Mariinsky Theatre in St Petersburg aged 19 on his graduation from the Imperial Theatre School. He took leading roles and later his pupils included the kind of Anna Pavlova, Tamara Karsavina, Mikhail Fokine and Vaslav Nijinsky. By 1923, he left the newly formed USSR for France, where he brought Diaghilevas Ballets Russes in France before settling in London in 1930. The dancer moved in to Colet House, living on a lawn floor and repeating in the upstairs galleries which once served as Sir Edward Burne-Jonesa painting rooms. The area is still applied by emerging artists, and is leased out by the Research Society to its neighbor LAMDA. Here, with a symbol of Pavlova in Manhunter Sylphide pride of put on the wall, a number of the founding figures of English dancing joined Legatas aclass of perfectiona including Dame Ninette de Valois, Sir Anton Dolin and Dame Alicia Markova. Legat died of pneumonia in 1937 but his memory lives on in the area. Angela Dixon, former chairwoman of the Historic Buildings Group, said: aOur borough has several interesting buildings associated with highly successful people and events but passers by usually donat know their history. aWeare pleased that Nicolai Legat and his contribution to the dancing is now being commemorated at Colet House, where he lived and worked when he found England.a The team has put up eight plaques so far for well-known former people, such as sculptor Henry Moore who carved pieces including Mother and Child in his Adie Road, Hammersmith, business between 1924 and 1928.

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