Mara Dolinskaia was a dancer at a great State Theatre.
In my youth, I was a junior assistant to this theatre’s Art Director. I was helping to re-paint what seemed like a million roses for the ball scene in The Queen of Spades: instead of the golden roses we had ordered, red ones arrived…

I adored the atmosphere in the wings: the giant dusty pieces of past sets, flocks of dancers rushing from the changing rooms to the stage, the suppressed tension of the assistants, who counted out the seconds between groups of dancers stepping out, the muffled sound of the orchestra, the stagehands changing the sets on que…

In the midst of this mysterious yet calculated whirlwind, I imagined young Mara, who, in the 1920s, danced in ballets, not unlike The Triadic. How she checked her pointe shoes, exchanged glances with her fellow dancers… Her eyes, under constructivist makeup, shine in the darkness of the wings, her yellow stockings hug tightly her shapely calves, her tutu’s starched folds crackle, the beads on her dress chime softly, her long-gloved arm snakes around the next girl’s waist, her fan flutters, her weightless scarf streams onto the stage behind her…

Kettle-drums fire up, violins join in, and Mara is now on the gold-lit stage, whirling among the other fairies…

After the show, she finds herself in the passionate embrace of her handsome young husband. The night sky is bursting with stars, and the well-dressed audience clutches their programmes as they pour from the theatre and flow along the great city’s brightly lit embankments, discussing what they have just experienced…

Mara Dolinskaia was my grandmother, and her husband, the city architect Vladimir Gerasimov, was my grandfather.
I am thrilled to work with Vista Allegre and recall ballet stars of the 1920s among the fields and flowers of Ilhavo.