Piper and Morgan dancers

Page 2 (right picture) from Stella Knight Ruess (1879-1964) scrapbook: open air dance performance, 1920s (?)

“To sister Bertha(e) Knight who urged me to attend summer school at (…) Morgan Dancers” (handwritten on bottom). From the Scrapbook kept by Stella Knight Ruess containing photographs, articles, poems, and notices related to dance performances from 1913 to 1952. | src University of Utah ~ J. Willard Marriott Library @ Omnia and MWDL

Full page 2 from Stella Knight Ruess (1879-1964) scrapbook

Stella Knight was born on 9 July 1879, in Cincinnati, Hamilton, Ohio; Daughter of William Henry Knight and Ella Joana Waters. She married Christopher George Ruess on 2nd April 1905, in Los Angeles, California. They were the parents of at least 2 sons and 1 daughter. She lived in Brookline, Norfolk, Massachusetts in 1920 and Los Angeles, California, for about 10 years. She died on 10 May 1964, in Los Angeles, California.

Fantasy, 1917-1918

**Malcolm Arbuthnot ::** Fantasy. Photograms of the Year. The annual review of the world’s pictorial photographic work, 1917-1918 issue (plate II). Edited by F. J. Mortimer. | src archive.org

The Frieze · ca 1915

**George Herbert**, 5th Earl of Carnarvon ~ The Frieze. Photograms of the Year, 1917-1918 issue (plate III). Edited by F. J. Mortimer | src archive.org

Sur la pointe, 1917-1918

**Mrs. M. Pearson ::** Sur la pointe. Photograms of the Year. The annual review of the world’s pictorial photographic work, 1917-1918 issue (plate VII). Edited by F. J. Mortimer. | src archive.org

L’oiseau Indien, 1917-1918

**Bertram Park ::** Seraphine Astafieva in ‘L’oiseau Indien’. Photograms of the Year. The annual review of the world’s pictorial photographic work, 1917-1918 issue (plate XXXII). Edited by F. J. Mortimer. | src archive.org

Kyra at the Winter Garden, 1921

**James Abbe ~** Kyra (Alanova). Shadowland magazine, October 1921 | src internet archive

Caption reads : Kyra / The exotic dancer in this season lending a touch of Oriental color to the Winter Garden revue

Alanova, also known as Kyra Alanova and Alice Allan (Seattle, 26 July 1902 – Venice, 21 December 1965 ), was an American dancer, choreographer and actress. Born in the USA to a Russian father who emigrated at the beginning of 1900, she was then the stepdaughter of the choreographer and dancer Adolf Bolm, an important collaborator of Sergei Diaghilev Ballets Russes. She followed her stepfather’s footsteps, from 1918 to 1924 she danced with Diaghilev’s company on the stages of London, Paris and Rome, from 1922 she was engaged as an actress in various Broadway and London productions, under the name of Kyra Alanova.

Active on the Paris theater scene in the 1930s, she was portrayed by Kees van Dongen in several paintings (“Portrait of Miss Alanova”, “Jeune fille aux pieds nus”), in a period when the two were probably lovers.

At the end of the 1930s she arrived in Italy for a tour of the most important theaters and met Count Andrea Di Robilant, screenwriter and director, the two married shortly after and Alanova remained for a few years working in Italy, dividing her time between family and work (mainly in Italian films).

At the end of the war, Alanova resumed her activity as a choreographer, founding her own dance company: the Ballet Russe Alanova or Ballets Alanova (of which Enrico Prampolini would be artistic director and with whom Leonor Fini would collaborate as set and costume designer) with which she toured America and Europe until 1946.

text adapted from the Italian Wikipedia entry for Alanova