When the Soviets took over Russia, Smirnova fled with a group of artists, making their way to Berlin, where she and her husband founded the Russian Romantic Theater and performed throughout Europe until 1926.

Completing her studies, Smirnova graduated in 1906, with her final performances as Titania in Marius Petipa's ballet of A Midsummer Night's Dream choreographed by Folkine and in two duets with Vaslav Nijinsky in a dance to Flight of the Butterflies by Chopin and to Waltz-Fantasia by Mikhail Glinka.

In 1907, she performed a pas de deux with Nijinsky in La fille mal gardée for which critics praised her technical execution but noted that her movement lacked melodic interpretation.

She participated in the premiers of Le Pavillon d'Armide and "Polovtsian Dances" from the opera Prince Igor at the Théâtre du Châtelet on 18 May 1909.

Critic Akim Volynsky called her performance heavy and complained that her "dances on point could be heard in the farthest corners of the Maryinky’s enormous hall".

[13] In her performance of "The Dance of the Frescoes" from The Little Humpbacked Horse, Volynsky praised Smirnova's power, stating that she "put her best foot forward",[14] overall commenting that her emboîté was done "particularly well".

A closed screening of a Berlin film Die Primaballerina (The Prima Ballerina) was released in April, showing Smirnova completing many of her own stunts.

[4][18] Financed by a wealthy German patron, the theater staged a broad repertoire dedicated to Russian arts and included ballet, opera and pantomime, with Krüger, Obukhov, and Smirnova as the principal dancers.

Based in Berlin, the company toured capitals of Europe[18] performing one-act ballets like Les millions d'Arlequin by Riccardo Drigo, Pastoral by Christoph Willibald Gluck, and Pictures of a Boyar Wedding, among others.

Struggling financially, from the fall of 1924 to spring 1925, the troupe toured several German venues, but in March 1925, Smirnova was ill. She required a major operation from which her recovery was uncertain.

[21] In the fall of 1925, Romanov began rehearsing Sergei Prokofiev's Trapeze, which debuted in Gotha on 6 November 1925 and then was performed in Hanover and Turin,[22] before the company folded in 1926.