A Life on the Points - Centennial Anniversary of Tamara Tumanova

audience as one of the most glamorous stars of the 20th century dance, was born in Siberia/Russia on March 2 of 1919 to a Georgian noble family, who escaped Russian revolution and Bolsheviks take over. Her family emigrated first to China and then to France, where Tamara became a piano and ballet student of Russian-born Olga Preobrajenska in Paris. By the time she was 13, she was internationally acclaimed as one of the three so-called baby ballerinas of Colonel Wassily de Basil's Ballets Russes. That’s where Tamara was discovered by another Georgian-born genius of the American ballet - George Balanchine, who created for her several ballets and called her his muse. Later in her career, she performed with Ballet Theater, now American Ballet Theater, and appeared in a number of Hollywood films. She was adored and beloved, but, for all that, much of her life was turbulent and fraught with crises. 
Short documentary “A Life on the Points” was created to celebrate centennial anniversary of the birth of the legendary ballerina and presented under Embassy of Georgia’s Al. Kartveli Speaker Series reflecting on Georgian-US century-long people-to-people exchange. Documentary author and former VOA journalist Nana Gongadze will present the film which is a result of years of her research and based upon accounts from people who knew and worked with Tamara Toumanova.