FAMOUS CROATS - MIA ČORAK SLAVENSKA

MIA ČORAK SLAVENSKA (1916 – 2002) About Mia Čorak Slavenska the absolutely competent Dr. Slavko Batušić wrote in 1942 in the fourth volume of Hrvatska enciklopedija (Croatian Encyclopaedia) the following: “She is the greatest and most talented dancer artist Croats have ever had.” This valorisation has resisted time and has remained valid for more than seven decades, so that to the “greatest and most talented“, also “one of the most famous Croatian women in the world in the 20th century” can be added. Mia Čorak was born in Brod on Sava on 20 February 1916. Her father Milan was a pharmacist, and mother Hedviga originates from the Palma family of talented musicians. The family moved to Zagreb when Mia was one year old and there her mother - as soon as Mia was able to walk properly - exposes her to musical and dance pedagogy of strict discipline and high criteria. At the age of three, she performed for the first time in Croatian National Theatre in the role of Trouble in Madame Butterfly. As child she learns ballet dance with Jozefina Weiss, and later her teachers are Margareta and Maksimilijan Froman, with whom she performed together at the stage of Croatian National Theatre. When she turns six, she performs in the ballet La Sylphide. At the age of seven she learns to play piano as the main subject at the Music School of the Music Academy. When she is eight, she dances Small Heart (Malo srce) in the ballet Licitarsko srce (Gingerbread Heart) by Baranović and with nine a main role in the ballet Figurine at Croatian National Theatre. At the age of twelve she leaves for Vienna where she receives lessons from the opera ballet master Leo Dubois and from Greta Kraus Arnicki, who teaches her modern dance. In that same year she specialises dance in Paris with famous ballet dancers Matilde Kschesinski, Olga Preobraženska and Ljubov Jegorova. After returning to Zagreb the twelve year old ballet dancer performs in a Ballet Evening by Mia Čorak at Croatian Music Institute and wows the public and the critics. Soon after that, she achieves a great success in the role of princess in Žar-ptica (The Firebird) by Igor Stravinski. With thirteen, she is a solo dancer of the Croatian National Theatre ballet and a prima ballerina at the age of eighteen. At Olympic Games in Berlin in 1936 she wins the dance competition. One year later she triumphs in Paris in the overcrowded Salle Pleyel. The French give her the Order of the Legion of Honour and proclaim her the ambassador of good will. That same year she acts in the famous movie The Swan's Death shot in Paris. She became first a guest ballerina and later a prima ballerina of the most famous ballet troop of the time Ballet Russe de Monte-Carlo, which marks the beginning of her world success. She dances in France, England, North America and Canada, South America... At the end of the Second World War she founds the Slavenska, Tihmar & Company and performs in tens of towns through USA. After marriage (1946) and the birth of her daughter Marija (1947) she performs with the group Slavenska Ballet Variante in the USA, Canada and Central America. Slavenska Franklin Ballet was formed in 1952 and with them she creates and produces a well-known ballet A Streetcar Named Desire, based on the play by Tennessee Williams. She again gives a guest performance In USA, but also in Cuba and in Japan. After that tour she is the prima ballerina at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. In 1956 she is the art director and guest ballet performer of the Louiswille Ballet. During five years she performed in special American TV shows. She is the art director of the Forth Worth Ballet from 1958. She stopped dancing in1962 and started working as ballet pedagogue at the University of California in Los Angeles. Mia Čorak Slavenska died on 5 October 2002 in Los Angeles and on 18 April 2005 the urn with her remains was transferred to the Mirogoj Cemetery in Zagreb. Stribor Schwendemann