Enrico Cecchetti

Enrico Cecchetti (21 June 1850 to 13 November 1928) was an Italian ballet dancer, mime and founder of the Cecchetti method. The son of two dancers from Civitanova Marche, he was born in the costuming room of the Teatro Tordinona in Rome. After a career as a dancer in Europe he joined the Imperial Ballet in St. Petersburg, where he created the roles of the Bluebird and Carabosse in Petipa's The Sleeping Beauty and was widely accepted by 1888 as the greatest ballet virtuoso in the world. He then turned to teaching. His students included Anna Pavlova, Leonide Massine and Vaslav Nijinsky, and in London in 1920 he taught Ruth Page and Ninette de Valois. He directed the Imperial Ballet School in Warsaw from 1902, and in 1925 Arturo Toscanini appointed him director of the dancing school of La Scala. He died in Milan. The Cecchetti method he created remains popular with ballet teachers.