
Désirée Lubovska, 1918

images that haunt us



A whimsical avant-garde portrait of Lubovska, the erotic Orientalist ballerina, as she strikes a dramatic pose in a risqué costume. This image was used to help promote Lubovska’s turn in Charles Dillingham’s musical spectacle “Everything” that played at New York City’s Hippodrome Theater and was accompanied by music by John Phillip Sousa. Mlle. Lubovska or Lubowska, as she was known, was born in Minnesota; she invented a mysterious Russian past as a way of capitalizing on the glamour of Pavlova, who was at the time, the reigning queen of ballet. Her romantic origin story also lent an air of mystery to her “Egyptian dances” as they were billed.
