Wulffius (née Nadezhda Krivko) was born in Russian ruled Latvia in September 1899 during the reign of the last Romanov Czar Nicholas II.
My father was a botanist and historian of Moscow University and my mother was born Countess Alekseyeva Yaroslavskeya.
At dinner time just before sweets (or dessert) the question was asked "Whoever is under punishment today sit in the chair".
[1]Wulffius as a child saw "Sleeping Beauty" done in the German style and this made a deep impression on her and she began to desire to be a dancer.
Her parents and aristocratic grandmother were opposed to her becoming a Ballet dancer as it was not considered respectable for a girl of noble origins.
Wulffius was firstly instructed by Marietta Balbo a famous former dancer with the Italian Ballet who taught private students in her studio in Latvia.
She eventually convinced her family to allow her to enrol in the Maryinski Theatre (Imperial Ballet School) in St Petersburg when she was about 12 or 13.
Unlike the other students she was able to travel back and forth from her home in Latvia to St Petersburg for extended periods of time.
[3]Wulffius remained at the Imperial Ballet School and the Petersburg University until 1922, when she fled Communist Russia for newly independent Latvia.
This first husband escaped Russia at the time of the Revolution via Vladivostok and sailed around Asia but died off the coast of Constantinople on the way to his parents home in Athens.
Wulffius' parents, who are believed to have lived at Ruskulova Manor in the Salnevas area of Latgale,[5] had left Latvia after its independence and returned to Russian territory in Vitebsk and lived hidden among the peasants until the rise of Stalin when they were killed by the Communists.
Two of her brothers (Constantine and Nicolai) who had been Czarist officers were sent into battle in the front lines to be killed in a war against Finland.
Wulffius was friends with the writer Lev Urvancov (Leo Urvantzov) who loosely based his character Vera Mirceva on her and an incident in her life.
Wulffius told her family that she had been a liberal socialist in her younger days as a student whose hope was for Russia to become a democratic constitutional monarchy.
The murder of the Tsar and Royal Family which she claimed to have learnt about while travelling on a train shocked her and after this she became anti-communist.
In the 1930s she spied on ex-pat communists on behalf of the Latvian government using the name of Vera Mirceva and posing as a Czech socialist.
Her son Herman Paul Vulfiuss (1924–1998) had come to Australia in 1949 [19] and married a 4th generation Western Australian Beth Lorraine Bartram (1931–2005) from Dumbleyung.
The past, the present, the moment to us so dear, will turn its pages as a fairy book where all is beautiful and good.
We will feel the warmth in our heart, and closeness that nothing could tear apart...[20]Wulffius founded her own Ballet School in Maddington Western Australia.
She ran this school for seven years before handing it over to her close friend Madame Gundi Ferris.
Wulffius told her family and friends that a certain Estonian dancer had stolen her manuscript on hand movements and gestures and published it under her own name in Estonia.
Joan Woods reports that the hand movements were based on those of Ella Ilbak, a famous Estonia solo-dancer and writer who studied in St. Petersburg at the same time as Wulffius.
She developed the spirit of a corps de ballet, beginning teaching relaxation and breath control, body stance, lifting the diaphragm and eye exercises.
She showed students how to rotate their wrists above their heads, incorporating body movements and using the entire studio floor to write the letters of the alphabet...Dancers felt the most valuable contribution she imparted in her classes was the spiritual element... She was wonderful and extraordinary, generous with her knowledge of theory, running a school, or how to read a contract, but Madame Nadine expected to be heeded...[21]Around 1979 she moved to live with her granddaughter Mrs Tamara Bartram (née Vulfiuss) at "Hillside" farm in Dumbleyung.