Mia Slavenska

Mia Slavenska, née Čorak (20 February 1916 – 5 October 2002) was a Croatian-American soloist of the Russian Ballet of Monte Carlo in 1938–1952 and 1954–1955.

Due to the royalist dictatorship of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia under a Serbian monarchy, she was banned from performing in her native Croatia which prompted her and her mother to relocate to Berlin in 1935.

Having moved to Paris in 1937, in the same year she starred in two films - with Marcel L'Herbier in "Nights of Fire" and with Jean Benoit-Levy and Marie Epstein in "The Dying Swan".

Video footage of the Roman Catholic procession for her funeral can be seen in the documentary created by her daughter titled "Mia: A Dancer's Journey".

A dancer since the age of four, she studied in Zagreb under Josephine Weiss and made her debut in Baranović's ballet Licitarsko srce in 1924, at what is today the Croatian National Theatre.

She left Zagreb for Vienna, where she danced under L. Dubois, G. Krauss and L. von Weiden; and Paris under Lubov Egorova, Mathilde Kschessinska and Olga Preobrajenska.

For many years she was the leading ballerina of the famous Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo and with whom she moved to U.S. in the outset of the World War II.