Lydia Lopokova

Lydia Lopokova

Lydia Lopokova was born in St. Petersburg in 1892 and trained at the Imperial Ballet School. She left Russia in 1910, joining the Diaghilev ballet (Ballet Russes) for the first time. She stayed with the ballet only briefly, however, leaving for the United States after the summer tour, where she remained for six years. She rejoined Diaghilev in 1916, dancing with the Ballets Russes, and her former partner Vaslav Nijinsky, in New York and later in London. She first came to the attention of Londoners in 'The Good-humoured Ladies' in 1918, and followed this with a raucous performance with Leonide Massine in the Can-Can of 'La Boutique Fantasque'.

When her marriage to the company's business manager, Randolfo Barrochi, broke down in 1919, the dancer abruptly disappeared, but she decided to rejoin the Diaghilev for the second time in 1921, when she danced the Lilac Fairy and Princess Aurora in 'The Sleeping Princess'. During these years she became a friend of Stravinsky, and of Picasso, who drew her many times. She also quickly became familiar with the members of the Bloomsbury set, comprised of Virginia Woolf and Lytton Strachey, among others, and was introduced to her future husband, John Maynard Keynes. They married in 1925, once her divorce to Barrochi had been obtained.

Besides being involved in the early days of English ballet, Lydia Keynes appeared on the stage in London and Cambridge from 1928 and broadcast on the BBC. She lived with Keynes in London, Cambridge and Sussex until his death in 1946, and continued to live in the same places thereafter, although she largely disappeared from public view. Lydia Lopokova Keynes died in 1981, aged eighty-eight.