Question by Superfluous: Who’s the best Ballerina of all time: Darcey Bussell, Sylvie Guillem, Svetlana Zakharova, Maya Plisetskaya…?
Margot Fontaine or Anna Pavlova?
Answers and Views:
Answer by Zhops
They are/were all wonderful dancers with very different characteristics, so it just comes down to personal favorites. Maya Plisetskaya was my first ballet idol when I was a teenager. (In fact the opening line pitched at me years later by some Russian guy that I met in a nightclub was “You look like Maya Plisetskaya. Do you know who she is?” What could I do but marry him a year later!) Both Fontaine and Pavlova will remain in ballet history, but the bodies (and the “levers”) and the training change and evolve. Someone once asked me dreamily if I thought there would ever be another dancer greater than Anna Pavlova and my response was, “Sure. The last dancer in the corps de ballet.”
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SandraLAVixen says
Personally, I like Svetlana's expression and attention to detail, it's very fine, simple, and mature. Particularly her arms.
I also admire Anna Pavlova's strive to be a thin dancer at a time when thinness was frowned upon. She was naturally thin, and changed the world's view that a thin dancer can be acceptable.
Unfortunately she's had a bad legacy today where only thin dancers are accepted.