It's standard Dutch fare: creating and seeing dance anew

January 11, 2004|Christine Temin, Globe Staff

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I lucked out on my last night at the Hotel des Indes. A large corporate function, too big for the Pavlova Suite, took over the entire dining room, so the suite was where hotel residents were eating that evening. The room has a black marble fireplace and inlaid floors. Without the conference table, it's a charming place, lit that night with dozens of flickering candles. I sat at a little round table, ordered some champagne, and raised a glass to the portrait on the wall of the great ballerina.

It's not a great painting. But it is recognizably the dancer who was a symbol of her art. Pavlova pushed the boundaries of dance touring in her day. She traveled -- slowly, in the days before jet planes -- by ocean liner and train, performing not only throughout Europe, but also in North and South America and the Far East, turning thousands of adoring audience members into balletomanes.

Her arrival in The Hague in the winter of '31 was supposed to be the start of a European tour. It never happened: She died of pneumonia on Jan. 23, weeks before her 50th birthday, in the sort of setting the peripatetic ballerina was accustomed to: a glamorous hotel room.