Stroboscopic portrait of ballerina Nora Kaye, by Gjon Mili (1947)

Emmy Towsey and Evelyn Ippen, Bodenwieser Ballet in Centennial Park, photo by Max Dupain (1939)

Ballet Society, by Irving Penn

Swan Lake Rehearsal in Paris, by Alfred Eisenstaedt (1930)

Ballet dancers rehearsing (1963)

Cyd Charisse

Valentina Blinova

Anna Pavlova as The Dying Swan (1910)

While touring in The Hague, Netherlands, Pavlova was told that she had pneumonia and required an operation. She was also told that she would never be able to dance again if she went ahead with it. She refused to have the surgery, saying “If I can’t dance then I’d rather be dead.” She died of pleurisy, three weeks short of her 50th birthday. She was holding her costume from The Dying Swan when she spoke her last words, “Play the last measure very softly.”

Members of the Metropolitan Opera’s ballet practicing, by Alfred Eisenstaedt (1936)

Allegra Kent and Eddie Viella by Bert Stern (1966)

Barbara Morgan, The Kick (1940)

Tamara Karsavina rehearsing with Margot Fonteyn for “Le Spectre de la Rose”

Shadow Dance Studio (1933)

Ziegfeld Follies (1927)

1949