Quick Facts
Biography
Born Nina Rigmor Strom, Nina Stroganova (1907 – July 1994) was a prima ballerina with several ballet companies in the 1930s and 1940s. She was born in Copenhagen, Denmark in 1907, and died in New York in July 1994 of leukemia. She studied ballet with Jenny Moller and teachers from the Royal Danish Ballet. Her schooling was at the Institute Jeanne d'Arc, Denmark.
She moved to Paris as a young woman to study ballet with the famed Russian ballerina and teacher, Olga Preobrajenska. It was in her studio that she met her future husband and dancing partner, Vladimir Dokoudovsky, son of Count Dokoudovsky of Tula, Russia. She began her career in the season of 1935-36 as Ballerina with Ballet Russe de l'Opera Comique of Paris. She was then hired as Ballerina with the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo by Leonid Massine and Rene Blum, who then dubbed her, Nina "Stroganova" while dining in a restaurant together.
She came to the United States in 1937, along with her husband, V. Dokoudovsky, to be Ballerina in the Mordkin Ballet company, with whom she danced notably in Peter and the Wolf, until 1940, when fellow dancer Lucia Chase hired her to be Prima Ballerina with her new company, Ballet Theatre, later known as American Ballet Theatre.
With World War II threatening the lives of male dancers, it was decided that Nina and Vladimir would join the Original Ballet Russe company of Colonel de Basil, which would be touring Latin America throughout the war years, to keep the male dancers from being drafted. After this arduous journey was completed, Nina and Vladimir settled in New York City. She performed as a guest artist at the Royal Danish Ballet, along with her husband, in Giselle and Swan Lake, Act II, a notable achievement. She also performed as a guest ballerina with the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo in 1950-51. She and her husband headed the Stroganova-Dokoudovsky Ballet Company in performances including at Jacob's Pillow, where the ballet The Abyss featuring a commissioned score by Alexander Tcherepnin was premiered.
They joined the faculty of the renowned Ballet Arts school in Carnegie Hall, where they led classes crowded with luminaries of the dance world for many years. Dokoudovsky later founded the New York Conservatory of Dance, specializing in what he called the Preobrajenska Method, which still exists under the direction of his second wife, Patricia Heyes Dokoudovsky. Nina Stroganova also taught at School of Classical Ballet in Englewood, New Jersey, and continued teaching her famous noon classes at the studios of City Center Theater until her sudden death at the age of 78. Her partner in later years was the danseur, Kenneth MacKenzie, whom she met while on tour together in the Original Ballets Russes.
Her leading roles include Lucile Grahn in Pas de Quatre, and in Capriccioso, Love Song, and Pas de Deux, all by Anton Dolin (1941); she danced Mazurka in Fokine's production of Les Sylphides at Ballet Theatre, Odette in Swan Lake (Ivanov), Columbine in Carnaval (Fokine), Ballerina in Petrouchka (Fokine), Tsarevna in Firebird (Fokine), Sugar Plum Fairy in the Nutcracker (Petipa), Passion and Frivolity in Les Presages (Massine), Russian Ballerina in Gala Performance (Tudor), in the premiere of Dark Elegies (Tudor), the Cat in Peter and the Wolf (Fokine), and Pig-Tailed Girl in Graduation Ball (Lichine).
Her daughter with Vladimir Dokoudovsky, Ludmila Dokoudovsky, was directress of the St. Louis Ballet Company, along with her husband, Antoni Zalewski, for a number of years, until their untimely deaths.
Students in Stroganova's noon classes included Alexandra Danilova, Eugene Collins, Gemze de Lappe, Bambi Linn, Agnes de Mille, Zizi Jeanmaire, Roland Petit, Nora Kovach, Istvan Rabovsky, Inge Sand, Toni Lander, Bruce Marks, Andrea Vodehnal, Michael Maule, Richard Marsden, Carl Corry, Daniel Baudendistel, Nicole Fox, Christine Dakin, Linda Giancaspro, Saul Davis, Charles Perrier, Diana Lasky, Trutti Gasparinetti, and Marilyn D'Honau, among many others.