On top of the Victoria Palace Theatre stands the statue of the prima ballerina Anna Pavlova.
Anna Pavlova (1881-1931) was born in St. Petersburg, Russia. At 10, she got accepted to the Imperial Ballet School, and after graduating, she entered the school’s company: The Imperial Ballet. Pavlova quickly rose through the ranks, and in 1906, at the age of 25, she was named prima ballerina. In 1909, she joined the newly founded Ballets Russes but left the following year to establish her own company.
In 1912, she moved to London and settled in the Ivy House, where she lived for the rest of her life. Pavlova and her company were the first to tour worldwide, performing in places where people had never seen ballet before, including Australia, India, and South America. She also was a leading figure in the development of British ballet. She died at the age of 50.
In 1911, the Victoria Palace Theatre owner, Alfred Butt, who had supported her career since she arrived in the UK, commissioned the theatre’s architect, Frank Matcham, to sculpt Pavlova’s statue and placed it atop the dome. In 1939, with the outbreak of WW2, it was taken down for safekeeping but was lost when the war ended. The faith of the original statue remains unknown. In 2006, the sculptor Hary Franchetti created a replica of the statue based on a photo of the original sculpture.
The larger-than-life-sized gilded statue depicts Pavlova wearing a classical tutu, standing in the arabesque position, with one leg in the air, her arms fully extended, tilting her head toward her right hand. Pavlova superstitiously hated the idea of a statue of her and refused to look at it.
The Anna Pavlova Statue is one of at least five memorials for the prima ballerina in London. In Golders Green Crematorium, there is a statue that holds her ashes, and two more sculptures of her stand on the grounds of her home at the Ivy House on Church Street.
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