Ludmilla Chiriaeff
| Ludmilla Chiriaeff | |
|---|---|
| Born |
January 10, 1924 Riga, Latvian SSR, Soviet Union |
| Died | September 22, 1996 (aged 72) Montreal, Quebec, Canada |
| Dances | Ballet |
Ludmilla Chiriaeff, CC GOQ (January 10, 1924 – September 22, 1996) was a Soviet-born Canadian ballet dancer, choreographer, teacher, and company director.
Ludmilla Alexandrovna Otsup was born in Riga, Latvia, to a Russian father Alexandr Otsup (1882-1948), writer known under the pen name Sergej Gorny, and his wife Ekaterina Otsup née Abramova (1886-1962) of Polish descent. She considered herself Russian by birth, as her parents were in Latvia only as refugees from conflict in Russia. She was raised and trained in Berlin, where she studied with Alexandra Nikolaeva, a former ballerina of the Bolshoi Ballet, with Nikolaeva's daughter and son-in-law Xenia Krüger and Edouard Borovansky, and with Eugenie Eduardowa. Her career was interrupted by the conflict of World War II, during which she was confined to a Nazi labor camp on the unfounded suspicion of being Jewish. She escaped during a bombing raid and, with the assistance of the Red Cross, made her way to Switzerland, where she was able to resume her ballet training and revive her professional career in Lausanne and Geneva. While resident in the Suisse romande, she married Russian artist Alexis Shiriaev, whose surname was spelled Chiriaeff, in the French style.
After immigrating with her family to Canada in 1952, Chiriaeff settled in Montréal, Québec, opened a ballet school, and soon began to create dances for Société Radio-Canada, the French-language public television service. Because of the success of her television appearances, she founded Les Ballets Chiriaeff, a small troupe that grew in size and popularity and eventually evolved into Les Grands Ballets Canadiens, in 1957. Under her guidance, shared jointly with choreographer Fernand Nault, this company achieved international prominence in 1966–7, during Canada's Expo 67 World Festival and subsequent tours of the United States and western Europe. Chiriaeff retired as co-artistic director of the company in 1974 and devoted herself to leadership of the company's associated schools.
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