Adolph Bolm was born on September 15, 1884, in
Saint Petersburg. He was a son of the first violin and assistant conductor of the
Mikhailovsky Theatre. Bolm graduated from the Russian
Imperial Ballet School in Saint Petersburg in 1904; his teacher was
Platon Karsavin. That same year he became a dancer with
Mariinsky Ballet. In 1908 and 1909, he ran a European tour with
Anna Pavlova. He then collaborated with
Diaghilev's
Ballets Russes in
Paris, along with several other dancers from Mariinsky. In 1917, during the second part of a two-part American tour by the
Ballets Russes (without Diaghilev, but with
Nijinsky), Bolm was injured during the ballet
Thamar. The injury was serious, and he was taken to the hospital for a long time and left the tour to stay in the
United States. In 1917 he also provided instruction to the young ballerina
Ruth Page. He went on to organize Ballet Intime in
New York and choreographed for the
New York Metropolitan Opera. Bolm and dancer Ruth Page appeared together in an experimental dance film
Danse Macabre (1922) directed by
Dudley Murphy. In 1919 he moved to
Chicago, which served as his base from which he taught widely across the country. In 1919, Bolm staged
The Birthday of the Infanta, his first large ballet for the
Chicago Opera Company, with music by
John Alden Carpenter, and danced by Bolm and Ruth Page. Bolm’s complete Infanta ballet has not been a part of a known ballet repertoire since then. However, two scenes of
The Birthday of the Infanta were performed by The Chicago Opera at Chicago’s Auditorium Theater on January 14, 1922, followed by several performances at the
Manhattan Opera House in New York City. In these two scenes, sixteen-year-old ballerina
Betty Felsen danced as the Infanta, Serge Oukrainsky danced as the dwarf, and Andreus Pavley danced as a Gypsy leader, as described in the February 3 New York Globe review. From 1921 to 1923, for example, he was invited by
Nellie Cornish to direct the summer intensive program in dance at The Cornish School (now
Cornish College of the Arts) in
Seattle. There he produced original works, such as
The Gargoyles of Notre Dame in 1922. No fewer than three of his students and dancers headed the program at the school from the 1910s to the 1950s:
Mary Ann Wells,
Caird Leslie, and
Lee Foley. In 1929, Bolm moved to
California. In 1933, following the opening of the War Memorial Opera House, the
San Francisco Opera established the San Francisco Opera Ballet (SFOB) under Bolm's direction as the ballet master. On June 2, 1933, even before he produces dances for operas, SFOB begins presenting independent, all-dance programs. Bolm continued to work in California and New York through 1947. He was one of the five choreographers involved in the 1940 founding season for New York's
Ballet Theatre. His last appearance on stage was in 1943, as the Moor in
Petrushka at the
Hollywood Bowl with the Ballet Theatre. His last choreography was for San Francisco Ballet (the successor to SFOB): "Mephisto" in 1947, from
Mephisto Waltzes by
Franz Liszt (revived in 1948). He died on April 16, 1951, in
Los Angeles. ==See also==