Thamara de Swirsky

Thamara de Swirsky (October 17, 1888 — December 24, 1961), sometimes seen as Tamara de Svirsky, Thamara Swirskaya, or Countess de Swirsky, was a Russian-born dancer, known for dancing barefoot.

Thamara de Swirsky was born in St. Petersburg^[1] into a prosperous Russian family. She studied piano in Paris and Munich, and dance in St. Petersburg.^[2]

Her claim on the title "Countess" was disputed. Her mother, Zenaide de Podwissotski, may have been a medical doctor in Paris before accompanying Thamara to the United States.^[3]

De Swirsky, publicized in 1911 as having the "most musical body in the world",^[4] "created a sensation" in the United States with her barefoot dancing.^[5] Reviewers assured (or warned) readers that, while her feet were bare, she did not dance nude.^[6] "Her costumes are triumphs of sartorial amplitude," declared one disappointed critic. "They leave everything to the imagination."^[7] She also performed a "bat dance" with billowing sheer fabric wings.^[8][9] She was the last advertised performer to appear at the Coliseum Garden Theatre in Raton, New Mexico, before it was destroyed in a 1911 fire.^[10]

Thamara de Swirsky also played piano as part of some of her performances.^[11] "Her style of dancing is her own," explained one Los Angeles reporter.^[12] Beyond the vaudeville stage, at the Metropolitan Opera^[13] she appeared as a dancer in Orfeo ed Euridice and Zar und Zimmermann, both in 1909.^[14] In January 1910 she danced in Delibes' Lakmé with the Boston Opera, at English's Opera House.^[15] In 1912 she performed a version of her dances in a short silent film^[16] for Independent Moving Pictures.^[17] In 1913 she was part of an advertising campaign for Seduction perfume.^[18]

Her opinions, whims, and demands made news.^[19] She smoked cigars and cigarettes.^[20] She was said to have insured each of her toes for $10,000 in 1910.^[21] In 1914, she was a member of Anna Pavlova's company, and her pleas for a more humid New York hotel room were reported in the New York Times.^[22] Italian artist Piero Tozzi painted a portrait of de Swirsky, titled "His Flame of Life", when she turned away his romantic interest.^[23][24]

During World War I she performed in New York, combining dance and "dramatic art".^[25] In 1919 she appeared in a silent film, The Mad Woman, made by the Stage Women's War Relief Fund.^[26][27]

In 1910, John Jacob Astor bought 25 seats for one of her concerts in Newport, Rhode Island, and sat by himself in the center to watch her performance.^[28]

In 1933 there were reports that Swirskaya was engaged to marry twice-widowed New York lawyer Frederick G. Fischer and that his family committed him to an asylum to prevent the match.^[29][30]

Thamara de Swirsky professed particular love for Los Angeles as early as 1910, recalling that "I knew when I first touched foot to your soil that here I would find the warmth and the glow which would call out the best that is in me."^[31] She settled in Los Angeles after her dance career; she taught and played piano for a living. She died there in 1961, weeks after she was badly injured in a traffic accident during a storm,^[32] aged 73 years.^[33]

There is a statuette of Thamara de Swirsky in a dance pose, by Paolo Troubetzkoy, in the collection of the Getty Museum. Her unpublished memoirs have also been discovered in recent years.^[34]

• Thamara de Swirsky at IMDb.
• Photographs of Thamara de Swirsky in the Jerome Robbins Dance Division Photograph Files, New York Public Library.
• Photograph of Thamara de Swirsky in the George Grantham Bain Collection, Library of Congress.
• Photograph of Thamara de Swirsky in an Egyptian-inspired costume and pose, from the Muzeum Narodowe w Warszawie.
• Photographs of Tamara Swirskaya by Bassano Ltd, in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery.