I went to see Nijinsky's grave again -- the last time I was there, there was no statue. A very kind worker guided me there (as the lady at the entrance mis-directed me) and on the way he showed me the grave of a woman, which was COVERED with pointe shoes, mostly rotted although there was one pair that seemed to be made of a metal.

Does anyone know whose grave it is? The nearest I can guess from going to different websites is Ludmilla Tcherina, but I would like to know for sure. The man told me, I am sure, but I had trouble understanding everything he said.

Thanks in advance.




Moderator's Note: Thanks to ViolinConcerto for sharing her photos. The first two are the "mystery grave." The third is Nijinsky's.

VC

There are several ballerinas and dancers of note buried there, it could have been Tcherina, Emma Livry or Olga Prebrajenska.

Also the famous can can dancer La Goulue is buried there, as well as Gaetan and Auguste Vestris.

I checked for those dancers who were on the map, and none was in the general location (in section 21 or 22). It also seems that it had to have been someone in the 20th C, since the pointe shoes were quite modern. I wish I had known about Vestris and Prebajenska when I was there earlier today!

Seeing as this was Montmartre, that's probably a place that a whole lot of people have mistaken for Marie Taglioni. That's her mother's grave, even though her name is on it. Mom's name was Sophie. Marie Taglioni is buried at Pere LaChaise, under her nominal title as Comtesse de Voisins.

Merci -- and I'll keep searching as well for the exact answer.

Dear Mel, I'm sorry to contradict you and I don't know who's right or wrong but I know those cemeteries very well for personal reasons, and according to a former colleage and friend historian of parisian cemeteries, Miss Taglioni is buried in Marseilles and not in the Père Lachaise.

As for Nijinski's grave, the statue is a gift of the Russian Federation.

Just happened to have gotten out my trusty 1924 Guide Bleu prior to a trip next month. I find Vestris in Section 5 and Emma Livry in Section 31, but can't locate the others. Leo Delibes (Coppelia, Sylvia) is in 9.

An amazing collection of major 19th century artists --- Berlioz in 7. Offenbach (near Delibes) in 9. Halevy in the Cimitiere Israellite. Henri Murger, author of Scenes de la Vie de Boheme, in 5. Jacques-Louis David's most famous model Mme. Recamier in 30.

Not to leave out Stendahl ( (18), Zola (19), Dumas fils (21), Heine (27), de Vigny (14), the Goncourt brothers (13).

I can imagine them gathering after midnight for conversation and jam sessions.

You can ask a map to the guard who's at the enter of the cemetery. They're free (a courtesy of the city of Paris) and the locations of famous graves are shown. Both Montmartre and the Pere Lachaise are worth a visit, and Montparnasse too if you have enough time.

Thanks bart and cygneblanc -- I did get a map, but none of the dancers mentioned are in the location that the guard showed me.....the mystery continues!

When I get home, and upload my pictures, I shall insert a photo of the mystery grave, and of Nijinsky's as well.

Actually, we're both right. Taglioni was originally interred in St.-Charles Cemetery in Marseilles in 1884. In 1930, when her grandson Augusto's wife Louise de Heredia died, he decided to have a family plot in Pere LaChaise. He exhumed remains as necessary (his father, mother, and grandmother. He declined to have his grandfather in there! "Grandma didn't like him.") from other cemeteries, and reinterred them in region #94 Rue Pacthod of Pere LaChaise, just down the road from the ashes of Isadora Duncan. As Louise was a member, the Academie Francaise has perpetual care of the gravesite. There is nothing on this marker - a cross - to identify the Comtesse Gilbert de Voisins, Marie Taglioni, as the dancer.

If you went back to the Montmartre cemetery and brushed aside the retting pointe shoes, you will find an inscription which reads, "MARIE TAGLIONI/a sa mere bien aimée." (Rather poor form to upstage your mother like that!) This grave is under the perpetual care of the Institut Italien, not a bad bunch of folks to look after a Swedish girl - her maiden name was Karsten!

Anyway, this is kind of getting like The Wrong Box. In 1950, when Nijinsky died and was buried in London, Serge Lifar, believing that the Taglioni grave in Montmartre was indeed Marie, fought legally for the remains of Nijinsky and in 1953 won the right to have them reinterred a few plots away from whom Lifar believed was the Sylphide. The statue now adorning his grave portrays A Petrouchka, but is not in the historically correct costume for the ballet.

Thanks Mel. I'll try to see this grave, it's easy to find since it isn't in the romantic area.

Your landmark on Rue Pacthod is a grave marked Gauthier (N.B., not Gautier - he's in Montmartre with Mrs. Taglioni. Can't you just see it? "Gee you look awful, what did you do last night?" "Oh, I was just helling around until all hours with Theophile Gautier and Mother Taglioni up on Montmartre!"), turn left down a little lane, and on the right is the Comte Gilbert de Voisins plot.

Here's an article in French about the cimetière Saint-Pierre in Marseilles, which mentions that Marie Taglioni used to be buried there but, as Mel wrote, is indeed now at the Père Lachaise:

http://p.landru.free.fr/chapdelaine/articl...?id_article=498

Thanks, Estelle!

And thanks to the strenuous efforts of Pierre LaCotte, much of the confusion about who's got which Taglioni where is gradually being sorted out by various authorities. The next run of maps for the Montmartre Cemetery will include Sophie or Sophia, I still can't be sure which is correct, Taglioni, Marie's mother. The present stock of maps there is to be used until the master wears out, but Marie has been whited out on that document. The next orientation map of Père LaChaise will clarify where the Sylphide lies. Metalphoto maps at both burying grounds will further demystify those wishing to pay respects at the correct resting-place. But perhaps a thought from a son who remembers his mother with love: When at Montmartre, don't stop saying prayers in memory of Mme. Taglioni. She must have been a pretty good mom.

Well, congrats to Pierre Lacotte and others, because as a former administrator of parisian cemeteries I know very well how it's difficult to get to have the location of someone's grave on the maps. Who did handle the request ?

What a fascinating, varied group of people we find on BT!

I don't know specifically, but I know that the Registrar of Vital Statistics and the Academie Française were active in the matter. As late as 1990, the Registrar for Marseilles had no idea that any person named "Marie Taglioni" had EVER lived or died there! The office was, however, aware of a certain "Comtesse Gilbert de Voisins", but had no idea of what she did other than be a countess! You just have to admire bureaucracy, don't you?

Wow, I wish this discussion had been held a month ago! I just got back from a trip to France and my husband and I spent a morning at Pere Lachaise. I had no idea that Marie Taglioni was buried there, if I had I certainly would have sought out her grave and paid my respects.

Pere Lachaise is a very beautiful cemetery, but it can be difficult to locate specific graves, even with a map. It's well worth a visit but I recommend that you go early in the morning to avoid the midday sun. It also gets more and more crowded as it gets later in the day. And wear comfortable shoes - that's really important!!

Well I don't know the City of Marseilles' administration but I can tell you the city of Paris' is terribly bureaucratic

Few people realize what a wealth of information exists in cemeteries, even if you don't stop in at the office to see if they have any supportive documentation on the deceased. As a historian, I spend a lot of time researching cemeteries. One of my favorite epitaphs is "Lydia Smith, (years) who died in the explosion of a lamp filled with Danforth's non-Explosive Burning Fluid"

Well, for the ones who would be tempted to get infos from French cemeteries, I have to warn you that French legislation related to secret of private life doesn't allow those who aren't "tenant in common" of the plot to get some infos. The only thing they can do is to go in the cemetery, try to find the grave and see what's written on.

I was very strict on that policy, families can (and sometines do!) intend lawsuits against administration. Nevertheless, you can't control everything from your office, and often if you go to the offices of the cemeteries (there are 19 in Paris) and ask for a particular grave, you may be told the answer. I don't know how strict is their policy now. I was amazed to see how it's easy to get infos from American cemeteries !

Yes, and Canadian ones, too. It's no wonder, with privacy standards like those to work with, it's harder to get info from French cemetery administrations, and also provides some insight into why even the cemeteries are unaware of certain critical information about their remains and monuments.

I appreciate your comments, cygneblanc.

We had elaborate handwritten notes, several years ago, from someone who had visited the gravesite of
Olga Preobrajenskaya at Montmartre cemetary. After failing to find it during our visit, we went to the office
and asked. The person told us she could give us the location only if we provided the exact year of death,
because that's how names are listed.

We knew approximately but not exactly.
We never found the gravesite, although saw many others, including Nijinsky's, during our search.

Well, if we exclude legal implications, another problem is that not every cemetery has informatic listings, and yes, if you don't have a precise date, it's almost impossible to find something on the paper listings, because there are just too many names...

Time for a computer and Windows Excel! But really, I have great sympathy for cemetery administrators who have to work under such constraint!

Excel doesn't work for those things since there are about 7 000 000 000 bodies in parisan cemeteries There is a special sofware developped especially. Some names are already computarized and the full thing should be finished in 10 years !

I gather that the "legal implications" have expired for those burials which took place while the town was still called Lutetia?

Yes, I think so

Err, could you explain why there are so many bodies ? 7 *billion* sounds so enormous, compared to the world population...

Oops sorry, there are only 7 000 000 millions (that's already a lot) and 7 not billions. To give you an idea, there are 100 000 plots in the Père Lachaise alone, and they contain about 700 000 bodies.

Well, there are a lot explanations. I won't enter into details very much because the thread will become gruesome, but you can do a lot of things with a single plot. Cremation until a few years ago wasn't usual and it was thought in the 19th and 20th that it was important to have a big plot with a deep vault and an impressive monument.

Thanks for the explanation ! 7 billion sounded really strange to me... but I agree that 7 million already is a lot, and it must be very complicated to manage all that.

I wonder if it would be of any interest to try to compile (for example on a web site) a sort of "guide of ballet-related graves", for example with photographs of the graves of famous dancers or choreographers ? I vaguely remember that several years ago, the magazine "Danser" had done an article about some graves, but of course only a few people were listed... Compiling a list probably would be quite time-consuming, especially with all the legal restrictions you mentioned, but perhaps it could lead to interesting discoveries.

One can find surprising things in cemeteries, for example in the small (and otherwise uninteresting) cemetery of my parents' village, there is the grave of Liane de Pougy (1869-1950), who briefly was a dancer (but I think, a cabaret dancer, not a ballet dancer) and a famous "demi-mondaine" of the "Belle Epoque"... but she's not buried with the name "Liane de Pougy" (a pseudonym), not as "Anne-Marie Chassaigne" (her birth name) or "Princesse Ghika" (her married name) but under a religious name (something like "Anne-Marie-Madeleine de la Pénitence") because in the last years of her life she was in some religious order...

The idea guide of ballet-related graves website is great. I think it could be done, but only in giving the name of the dancer buried in the grave and the location if it's known, and nothing more (at least for french graves) .As for pictures, the rule is that in cemeteries, you can take pictures pour your personal use only. If your website isn't commercial I guess it's OK to put the pictures on, but you have to take them off if a tenant in common of the grave wish it.

Let's begin:

Claire Motte in buried in the "cimetière des Batignolles". The grave ins't easy to find and it's very ordinary.

That's what I was getting at. I thought, "My, I know that the Gauls are famous for compiling and preserving information, but seven billion seems a bit high." But I'll bet that there ARE some records somewhere of decedents from before 212 C.E.

Thanks for the legal information.

Perhaps we could at least start a thread about it (in Ballet history for example, or Anything goes- it might be a bit morbid to put it in the dancers subforum...) and then try to compile a more precise list later (listed by country, city, etc. for example) when we have enough information.

Ballet History would be an ideal spot! And I don't think it's morbid at all. In the US, Veterans' Groups, burial societies and all nature of other groups frequently keep lists of where "their" dead are buried, and often make pilgrimages to decorate the sites on both May 30 ("Memorial Day" formerly known as "Decoration Day") and All Saints' Day. There is another Veterans' occasion on November 11 (Armistice/Remembrance/Veterans' Day, but that day is really supposed to honor the war veterans who are still around!) But if someone feels moved at ANY time to pay respects at a burial site, with whatever memorial you please, that's a good thing! You don't have to wait!

PS. If you want to express your gratitude to someone who HASN'T shuffled off yet, but to whom you feel grateful, that's even better!

I have just started a thread in Ballet History:

http://ballettalk.invisionzone.com/index.php?showtopic=24809

There's a lot to be learned from cemeteries. A lot about the living as well as the dead.

In Solzhenitsin's Cancer Ward, maybe he's exaggerating, but it's clear that under Stalin people were "strongly discouraged" from visiting cemeteries, since it was backward-looking and not optimistic, and the state required everyone to put shoulder to wheel and further the revolution.

In my one experience of a former soviet-dominated culture, i.e., Poland, I found the main cemetery in Bytom was as busy as Central Park -- children playing, grown-ups visiting. I watched as a lady in stockings and pumps came up to a grave, reached up int o a branch of the tree standing over it, withdrew a cloth, knelt down and polished the entire grave, changed the water in the vase, replaced the tired flowers with new ones, and sat down for 15 minutes and read from a book.

The Jewish cemetery was full of graves but I was the only visitor. The pre-WW2 grand rebbe's enormous black-basalt tomb was inscribed in Hebrew and in German with quotations from Job and (if I remember right) from Faust. Every tomb that bore a death-date post 1945 said the deceased was born in Lodz. While I was standing there a soccer ball came over the wall, followed by 10 urchins who got me to come over with them into the parking lot on the other side and be their goalie. I could have been in some danger -- Bytom now has a lot of unemployment, and drunken parents put their kids on the street, and they roam in packs.

My home town in Mississippi is near the river and one of the oldest settlements in the state. The Catholic and Jewish cemeteries always draw me when I go back there. I am proud to say I grew up in a town with no anti-semitism, where Jewish families were at the top of society. The synagogue has been turned into a museum, since all the Jewish families have left PG, but the cemetery is crowded and maintained like a golf course.

The Catholic cemetery contains more graves for the year 1873 (the year of the Yellow Fever epidemic) than for hte entire 20th century. A quietly stunning fact.

Sorry, I've wandered far from ballet.

The only time I visited East Berlin in 1977, a small group of my classmates and I went to Dorotheenstädtischer Friedhof, where Brecht, Weigel, Fichte, Hegel, and Heinrich Mann are among those who are buried. It was full of elderly people, who sat quietly on the benches. We were the only people under 60 there.

ViolinConcerto has sent photos, which you can view by returning to the first post.

ViolinConcerto, thanks for the evocative photos.
The pile of pointe shoes is incredibly creepy.

Creepy indeed, but also sad and somehow inspiring that people carried these shoes all that way as a kind of tribute.

I have conflicting feelings about such things. The photos evoke the disintegration that is part of death, but also a kind of survival through the power of the human memory. A dancer's shows seem inseparable from his or her existence as a dancer.

One of the first things that came to mind when I saw that sad, somehow inspiring jumble of old shoes, were thse great piles of eye glasses, hair, shoes, artificial limbs, and other personal remains taken from the victims of Auschwitz -- a heart-wrenching display, protected by glass windows, for those who visit the camp today. And one that no one could possibly forget.

I am often reminded in the funeral service: In the midst of life, we are in death. But I find in cemeteries, no matter of which religious denomination or even of none at all the Lutheran sentiment that as the first is true, so "in the midst of death, we are in life" is also true. Durable memorials to past persons who lived, loved, and were loved, are what cemeteries are. Sometimes they even can fill in blanks in biographies, as with my great-grandfather. He came to Newburgh, NY, with an old miner friend of his, and the friend died in Newburgh, leaving only a headstone as memorial there. In reviewing the local newspapers of about 1871, I found that they had been quite active about town, and that he met my grand-grandmother at an Episcopal "sociable", even though she was a Quaker, and he a Disciple of Christ. Having that extra name to look for made seeking my ancestors out much easier.

Still, the point is well taken concerning the shoes on Mother Taglioni's grave. I keep fancying her shade looking on and asking, "Vot in de hell is wik all dese smelly shoes, by gar?" Remember, she was Swedish.

So is that the judgement/consensus, that it is the grave of the mother of Marie Taglioni -- which in all likelihood is generally thought to be Marie's????

Yes. As noted elsewhere, this tomb has written on it: MARIE TAGLIONI/à sa mère bien aimée. Read the label, people; read the whole label.

Yes, Mel, when you're saying "in the midst of death, we are in life", I completely agree. Cemeteries are beautiful places where peace can be found.

Nevetheless, I don't like very much these pointes schoes on the grave. As others, i think it looks very creepy because it reminds me the desingration of the body while I want to remember soul. I'm not at all into all these ex votos people (at least in France) are setting down on graves. It kills everything instead of eternity take its place.

Yes, I know very well the sort of movements you mean. It is not very difficult to go over from respect for the departed to animism (too MUCH respect) to contempt (too little). In the nineteenth century, cemetery planning in North America went into a design change associated with the picturesque movement in architecture. Much green, open space, watercourses, discovered vistas were incorporated just to bring a soothing sense of life everlasting to the mourners who came to visit. Picnics on the greens were encouraged, to keep the family together. Children could play games, to bring a sense that the dead were still onlookers. It was not so different from Asian cultures placing food at graves.

Sitting on gravestones has promoted some odd humor in the US, at least. When war veterans were first afforded tombstones from the federal government, shortly after the American Civil War (1861-65), they were tablets with either a flat crest or a gentle barrel arch. When the former Confederate states were authorized to produce stones for their veterans, fashion had changed. The basic popular headstone was by then the gothic (pointed) arch, and the joke was that, "Our boys have the pointy headstones so that the damyankees can't sit on them!"