ENGLISH ACTRESS Victoria Tennant will appear at UCLA’s Little Theater at Macgowan Hall on Sat. Oct. 18th at 4pm to discuss her book, “Irina Baronova and the Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo’.
Tennant made her name as an actress starring as Robert Mitchum’s love interest in the famous television miniseries The Winds of War, before moving to Los Angeles in the 1980s and subsequently starring in two films with Steve Martin, her future husband: All of Me and L.A. Story. Tennant has a very strong personal connection to the subject of her book: Irina Baronova was her mother.
Tennant’s book is a sumptuous, illustrated history that tells the story of the rise of modern ballet and its popularity through her mother’s riveting life story. Baronova danced for the Ballet Russe after its founding in Monte-Carlo in 1932. The name Ballets Russes had been used by the impresario Serge Diaghilev for his company, which revolutionized ballet in the first three decades of the 20th century.
The Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo toured chiefly in the United States after the outbreak of the war, introducing audiences to ballet in cities and towns across the country, in many places where people had never seen classical dance.
The company’s principal dancers performed with other companies, and founded dance schools and companies of their own across the United States and Europe, teaching Russian ballet traditions to generations of Americans and Europeans.
This program is set for an afternoon performance, which will allow interested audience-goers to experience the Los Angeles Ballet’s presentation of “Swan Lake” in Royce Hall that evening. For information on that performance visit www.roycehall.org.
Tickets ($29) are now available at cap.ucla.edu, Ticketmaster or the UCLA Central Ticket Office (310.825.2101).
