Nina Alexandrovna Tikhonoff

Born into the Tikhonov family - the famous publisher Alexander Nikolaevich and Varvara Vasilievna Shaykevich (née Zubkova), acting secretary of the writer Maxim Gorky, his illegitimate daughter.

After the October Revolution, in 1918, with her grandmother and governess, she left for the Urals - to Yekaterinburg, to see relatives. They lived near the house where the royal family was imprisoned. When the Civil War came to Yekaterinburg, my grandmother decided to return to St. Petersburg. After two weeks of a difficult move, they settled in Petrograd next to the mansion of the ballerina Kshesinskaya. When the arrests began in Soviet Russia, many began to think about emigration. On October 16, 1921, accompanied by Gorky, Nina and her mother left for Finland. Then they gathered through Sweden to Berlin, where their grandmother was already waiting for them.

At that time, the former star of the Mariinsky Theater Olga Iosifovna Preobrazhenskaya was in Berlin. Nina began to rave about ballet, starting classes in the studio of Evgenia Eduardova. And when Preobrazhenskaya also opened a classical dance studio in Berlin, her grandmother brought the girl there. When Olga Preobrazhenskaya arrived in Paris, Nina's family moved there in 1923, and Gorky went to Italy. In 1925, Anna Pavlova gave a charity concert in Paris. To participate in the play, she invited several of Preobrazhenskaya's students, including Nina Tikhonova. After this performance, she was offered a job with the Russian Romantic Theater, and at the age of fifteen she became a professional ballerina. She toured with this troupe in Germany and Italy, but a year later the troupe broke up. After some time, Tikhonova was invited by the prima of the Grand Opera - Olga Spesivtseva - to her troupe.

In 1928-1934 she danced with the troupe of Ida Rubinstein. In 1929, 1932 and 1939 - in the troupe "Russian Ballet of Bronislava Nijinska". Before the war, she danced the cancan at the Tabarin entertainment cabaret in Montmartre.

On the eve of the occupation of Paris, with her sick brother and grandmother, she moved to the south of France, to Jurançon. In 1942, Nina Tikhonova received an invitation to the Ballet de Monte Carlo troupe, and went on tour with her to Spain. For some time she danced in the troupes of Alisa Vronskaya, Clotilde and Alexander Sakharovs.

In 1946, Nina Aleksandrovna left the stage and took up teaching. She taught at the Nina Tikhonova Ballet School, which she opened in Paris, as well as at the Russian Conservatory and the University of Dance. She also performed as a choreographer. She staged ballets, dances in operas and operettas, mainly in the French provinces. She wrote a book with her memoirs - "The Girl in Blue" (fr. "La Jeune Fille en bleu"), published first in Lausanne, and then in Moscow in 1992.

She was not married and did not have children. In the mid-1970s, she managed to visit her homeland, Leningrad. She was awarded the French Order of Arts and Letters.