VERA NEMTCHINOVA . Biography

(1899 - 1984)
Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo
State Opera in Kaunas
The San Francisco Ballet

BIOGRAPHY

Vera Nemtchinova was born in 1899 in Moscow. She began her dance training at the age of 10. In 1915, Vera auditioned for Serge Grigoriev, of Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, and she was hired as a member of the Corps de Ballet. This was the same year that Lena Antonova started with Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. The two would come to be lifelong friends. Vera’s first solos were the Mazurka and Pas de deux in Les Sylphides in 1916. Diaghilev gave Vera the nickname of "Little Vera", as she was younger than Vera Karalli another of Diaghilev’s ballerinas. It was not until 1924 that she would be promoted to Prima Ballerina. It was in that same year, Vera’s danced one of her most famous roles in Bronislava Nijinska's Les Biches.
In 1927 Vera and fellow Diaghilev dancer, Anton Dolin, left the company to form their own company along with Anatole Oboukhoff, who Vera would marry years later. They toured Europe until Dolin left the company to return to the Ballets Russes. Vera went on to be the Prima Ballerina of the State Opera in Kaunas, Lithuania from 1930 to 1935. She also danced with René Blum's Ballet Russe in 1936, Col. de Basil's Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo in 1939, and was a guest artist with Ballet Theatre, now ABT, in 1943 and the San Francisco Ballet in 1946.