A new book on a Russian émigré and ballet in Malta was launched recently, dealing with 20th-century ballet history at the iconic 18th century theatre, the Manoel Theatre in Valletta.

Princess Poutatine and the Art of Ballet in Malta, the first book on ballet histories in Malta, focuses on the tireless efforts of Princess Nathalie Poutiatine (1904-1984) and her significant legacy in dance on the island of Malta.

The new book, published by Fondazzjoni Patrimonju Malti in collaboration with Midsea Publishers, features the scholarship of Kathrina Farrugia-Kriel, head of research at the Faculty of Education (Royal Academy of Dance) in London. 

The book explores the connections between the philosophies of ballet in the studio and on the stage, and the inspiration and aspirations of the iconic Ballets Russes, Anna Pavlova and Lubov Egorova.

From left: Henry Frendo, Kathrina Farrugia-Kriel, Giovanni Bonello, Daphne Palmer Morewood and Yosanne Vella.

A woman who transformed the art she could not practise into a quietly heroic calling- Professor Emerita Lynn Garafola

It chronicles Poutiatine’s significant work between 1930 and 1978, along with the political and cultural histories associated with the colonial, independent-seeking and republican eras of Malta.

At the launch, speeches by Tanya Bayona and Daphne Palmer-Morewood, and commentaries by Henry Frendo and Yosanne Vella, professors at the University of Malta, marked the importance of this key moment in Maltese cultural histories.

On reviewing the book, Emerita Lynn Garafola (Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, 1998) wrote: “Thanks to Kathrina Farrugia-Kriel’s Princess Poutiatine and the Art of Ballet in Malta, we meet one of the emigration’s lesser-known figures, a woman who transformed the art she could not practise into a quietly heroic calling.”

Janice Ross, also a professor,  (Like a bomb going off: Leonid Yacobsen, 2015) wrote: “Kathrina Farrugia-Kriel’s major achieve­ment in Princess Poutiatine and the Art of Ballet in Malta, is her capacity to bring attention to these underpinnings essential to the bursts of individual voice and cultural identity in ballet. She has excavated a lost history and, in the process, has produced a timely reminder of the life of privilege of many who studied ballet in the late 19th and early 20th century in Russia, reminding us how it endured as a part of their identities in exile as well.”

Princess Poutiatine and the Art of Ballet in Malta can be purchased from Midsea Publishers, and other bookstores in Malta.

An attentive audience listening to the respondents’ comments on the new book.