Mia Slavenska

Short Biography

Mia Slavenska (Slavonski Brod, February 20, 1916 – Los Angeles, October 5, 2002), birth name Mia Èorak, was a famous Croatian-born American prima ballerina.She appeared rarely on film. A dancer since the age of four, she became the prima ballerina with the Zagreb Opera. After appearing in Jean Benoit-Levy`s film La Mort du Cygne (1938) and promoting it in the U.S., she remained there as a teacher and dancer. She formed the Slavenksa Ballette Variante and, later, the Theatre Ballette. In 1954, she became the prima ballerina of the Metropolitan Opera Ballet.Mia Slavenska was born in what was Brod na Savi in Austria-Hungary (later Kingdom of Yugoslavia. Born as Mia Èorak, she changed the name soon after permanently leaving the country in 1937.She studied in Zagreb under Josephine Weiss and made her debut in Baranoviæ`s ballet Licitarsko srce in 1924, at what is today the Croatian National Theatre in Zagreb, where she soon became prima ballerina at the age of 17. At the 1936 Berlin dance Olympics, coinciding with the Olympic games, she won the choreography and dance award. She left Zagreb for Vienna where she danced under L. Dubois, G. Krauss and L. von Weiden; and Paris under L. Jegorova, M. Kschessinska and O. Preobrazenska.In France she started working on film. For many years she was the leading ballerina of the famous Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo and with whom she moved to U.S. in the outset of the World War II. She gained American citizenship in 1947. Her own company, Ballet Variante, was formed in 1944 in Hollywood. Her greatest roles she achieved with the Slavenska Franklin Ballet Company that she founded with Frederic Franklin in 1950. One of her most highly regarded roles was as a strongly dramatic Blanche DuBois in Valerie Bettis` modern choreography of A Streetcar Named Desire, premiered in Her Majesty`s Royal Theatre in Montreal in 1952.Slavenska was the greatest Croatian-born ballerina of all times and one of the most influential artists of her time. She performed both coast to coast in the U.S. and internationally, including South America, Asia and Africa, becoming the prima ballerina of the New York Metropolitan Opera in 1954 - 55. She opened a ballet studio in New York in 1960, then taught at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) from 1969 to 1983 and concurrently at California Institute for the Arts (CalArts) from 1970 to 1983.Her brilliance was backed up with her striking red hair and appearance. She married Kurt Neumann , an Austrian-born actor, in 1946. They had one daughter, Maria. Slavenska died in a California retirement home on October 5, 2002.