Medardo Ángel Silva and Pavlova's Dance

Written by: Vicente Adum G.

This video features the famous ballerina Anna Pavlova performing The Dying Swan. In May 1917, Anna and the Grand Russian Ballet performed in Guayaquil, and among the audience was the poet Medardo Ángel Silva. Silva was so moved after witnessing Pavlova's interpretation of the dying swan that, according to Rodolfo Pérez, he wrote hidden behind the curtains of the press box at the Olmedo theater his celebrated poem DANSE D'ANITRA (a name surely inspired by the drama Peer Gynt by the Norwegian Henry Ibsen). Today, thanks to YouTube, we have at hand this 1920s film in which Pavlova performs her celebrated dying swan, which allows us to have an entirely new dimension for understanding and interpreting that marvelous poem by the Guayaquil bard, one hundred years after his death. In the choreography, a swan has been mortally wounded and struggles painfully against death, but in the end, loses the battle and dies. In light of this video and this explanation, I invite you to read the poem in question.

DANSE D'ANITRA

She goes lightly, she goes pale, she goes fine,
as if she possessed a winged essence
My God, this adorable dancer
is going to die…, is going to die…, she dies.

So airy, so light, so divine,
one cannot tell if she wishes to dance or fly;
and her body becomes a delicate wing,
as if the breath of God sustained her.

Pearl by crystalline pearl sob
the flutes in an ambiguous miserere…
The harps weep and the gusla trills…
Hold up the delicate dancer,
for she is going to die…, because she dies!

In the video you hear the superimposed audio corresponding to The Swan from Saint-Saëns' Carnival of the Animals, which is the music to which Anna Pavlova performed, guided by choreographer Mikhail Fokine, her now celebrated ballet popularly known as The Dying Swan. It is necessary to clarify this because, due to the name Silva chose for his poem, it has been erroneously believed that the music Pavlova danced to at the Olmedo theater was composed by Edvard Grieg for the work Peer Gynt, an assumption that differs widely from reality.