Joseph cornellss tamara toumanova biography
Irina baronova.
Pas de Deux
Picture a man living in a small house on Utopia Parkway in Flushing, Queens, just across the East River (and worlds away) from Manhattan. He is in his late 30s and lives with his mother and an invalid brother.
Joseph cornellss tamara toumanova biography
On a given evening in the winter of 1941, he climbs the stairs to the elevated train that will take him into what people in Queens still call "the city," where he will attend the ballet, as is his habit.
Perhaps he has chosen to attend Tchaikovsky's romantic Swan Lake, a favorite of balletomanes.
And perhaps, on this particular evening, he will watch a dazzling young ballerina dance the demanding Black Swan pas de deux and, seeing her spin dizzyingly on pointe, will feel his heart beat faster.
But the admirer watching the graceful swan was not just anyone.
He was the unique and eccentric artist Joseph Cornell, and if not exactly a man about town, neither was he, as some biographers have suggested, painfully shy. "The picture of a person withdrawn from the