How can a tiny 7-year-old ballerina in 1930s Berlin end up influencing the entire history of dance in Quebec? The life of Ludmilla Chiriaeff, both dramatic and luminous, illustrates the influence that a single person can have.
Ludmilla Chiriaeff was born on January 10, 1924 in Riga, Latvia. His father is Russian, his mother Polish, they had to flee Russia during the Russian Revolution.
“My grandparents lost touch for seven years,” says Katia Mead, the youngest of Ludmilla Chiriaeff’s five children. My grandfather had been hit by a bayonet in the stomach, he could not walk easily. My grandmother was quite old. So for them, having a child after everything they had been through, everything they had lost, it was truly a gift. »
The family subsequently settled in Berlin, where little Ludmilla was introduced to ballet at the age of 7. She progressed quickly and began dancing in productions of the Ballets Russes and the Nollendorf Theater.
PHOTO YVES BEAUCHAMP, LA PRESSE ARCHIVES
Ludmilla Chiriaeff in March 1968, marking the 10e anniversary of the Grands Ballets Canadiens, with Fernand Nault, co-artistic director and choreographer of the dance troupe.
The Second World War put an end to her young career: she was briefly locked up in a concentration camp in 1939 because she was believed to be Jewish. Then she knows about the bombings in Berlin. His father’s attitude helps him survive these ordeals.
He spent a lot of time with her because he was a poet, he worked as a translator of literature. He created a kind of magical bubble around my mother, which helped her get through difficult times as if she had colored sunglasses.
Katia Mead, daughter of Ludmilla Chiriaeff
She recounts how, coming out of a basement after a terrible bombing which had destroyed their building, they saw a house engulfed in flames.
“There was a very strong, very passionate fire in one of the windows,” says M.me Mead. At the other window there were small flames. Her father said to her: ‘Look, Ludmilla. This first window is Wagner. The other is Mozart.” It completely changes the way you see things. This way we survive frightening moments. »
Switzerland, then Canada
Ludmilla Chiriaeff moved to Switzerland in the 1940s and resumed her career as a dancer and choreographer. Then, she emigrated to Canada in 1952 with two children, pregnant with a third, “with very little money, with an address for a kind of refugee agency, with a husband who paints and who has no no money either.”
This did not prevent him from creating his first ballet school just a few weeks after his arrival, then a dance company.
It started small and it grew. She was also very lucky to arrive just as Radio-Canada was starting.
Katia Mead, about her mother, Ludmilla Chiriaeff
Ludmilla Chiriaeff choreography Cinderella for the new state company, which liked the performance so much that it regularly commissioned other ballets from him.
“Les Ballets Chiriaeff was really a company for TV,” says Marc Lalonde, general director of Grands Ballets Canadiens. It is original as an origin and as a development of the company. This is what allowed the birth and constitution of the Grands Ballets Canadiens in 1958.”
Jean Grand-Maître, a student of Mme Chiriaeff, who has become a world-class choreographer, explains that she had chosen this name to give gravitas to the company and for it to compare favorably to the National Ballet of Canada and the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, “even though it had 12 dancers and no budget.”
From the academy she had created, she founded the École supérieure des Grands Ballets canadiennes in 1966, an institution which would later take the name École supérieure de danse du Québec, then École supérieure de ballet du Quebec.
She knew how to play in the political environment, both in the separatist political environment and within the Canadian government. She wanted financing for her company. She juggled eight pins all her life.
Jean Grand-Maître, on the subject of the influence of Ludmilla Chiriaeff
Ludmilla Chiriaeff was obviously attached to classical ballet, but she understood that it was necessary to establish contact with new generations. This is how in 1970, with her accomplice Fernand Nault, she created the rock ballet Tommy, to the music of The Who. They did it again with the music of Beau Dommage, to the great pleasure of Katia Mead.
PHOTO PROVIDED BY THE GRANDS CANADIAN BALLETS
Ludmilla Chiriaeff’s daughter, Katia Mead, poses with the dancers of the Grands Ballets Canadiens during the company’s visit to Fairfax, Virginia, last February.
“I was listening to Beau Dommage at the time and every time I saw the ballet, it gave me chills. Then it was super cool to meet a band that was so popular with people of my generation. »
Ludmilla Chiriaeff withdrew from the artistic direction of the Grands Ballets Canadiens in 1974 to devote herself to training. To supervise the Upper School, of course, but also to implement programs in primary and secondary schools.
PHOTO RÉMI LEMÉE, LA PRESSE ARCHIVES
Ludmilla Chiriaeff in 1989.
She gradually reduced her activities and died on September 22, 1996, in Montreal, at the age of 72.
“She is buried in a lovely little cemetery next to a Russian church near Rawdon, in a little village lost in history,” says Katia Mead.