Dancers: Mila Cirul

 

Max Pollak

  1886 - 1970 (biography)

1924  

drypoint with color aquatint 

16 3/16 x 7 1/2" platemark 

pencil, lower right 

unnumbered proof; likely fewer than 30 printed 

pencil titled; secondary titling "Mila in colo" in lower left sheet corner; red Freidl Pollak Collection stamp in lower left sheet corner 

 

cream wove 

published 

artist 

23012 

$425.00 

It appears that this costume was designed for Cirul by Georg Kirsta for a 1924 production titled "Rustic Dance," choreographed by Grete Kolliner. A photograph illustrates this in The Art of Russian Movement, Misler, Nicoletta, p. 441, cat. K.

While in Vienna Max Pollak became involved in the avant-garde dance scene. He did a series of intaglio portraits of dancers, usually costumed and posed, from one of their noted performances. He is sometimes credited with being "the first etcher to turn his attention to the dance as a subject."

Pollak did numerous refined drypoint portraits of Joachim von Seewitz, Ellen Tels, Mila Cirul, Ronny Johansson, Tatjana Barbakoff, Maria Ley, Anne Osborn, and Russian dancers within the Tels circle.

Mila Cirul (1901-1977) was a Latvian dancer who trained at the Moscow Ballet under famed teacher Mikael Mordkin before pursuing modern dance, inspired by Isadora Duncan. She studied with influential modern dancer Ellen Tels, with whom she started the Ellen Tels School in Vienna in 1919. She eventually became known for her solo work as well, performing in the operas of Berlin, Vienna, and Hanover, taking up a brief stints with the Munich Dance Congress and Margarethe Wallmann's Tanzegruppe.

In 1932 Cirul moved to Paris where she found fame as an avant-garde performer, known for her passionate performances that contrasted with the classical compositions she danced to. She continued to dance until the 1940s when she began teaching, becoming a mentor to many of Paris' most famous modern dancers until her retirement in 1962.