Art Chowder January | February, Issue 19 | Page 42

Aponte Arrives Photos from the flier announcing Spokane Ballet’s 1986-87 season
All photos: Don Hamilton
A
number of posts from 2008, with many photos, refer
to his years with Spokane Ballet Company with fondness,
appreciation, and gratitude toward everyone he had worked
with. I like him. An especially moving one was about his
unique relationship with Rachel Farrell, the only member
of the company who stuck with him the entire time. She
was the only person to see him off just before he drove
away.
My sincere gratitude to Bob Herold for the many
recollections, including all the printed records of the
company’s history, and to Rachel Farrell.
Endnotes:
1 Spokesman-Review, May 3, 1987
2 Spokesman-Review Spokane Chronicle, May 9, 1987, p. A1
3 Quoted in the Spokesman-Review Spokane Chronicle Sunday, Oct. 30,
1988,Page B10
4 From an interview in Spokesman-Review Spokane Chronicle Sunday,
Oct. 30, 1988, Page B10
42
ART CHOWDER MAGAZINE
WHEN
Pavlova
CAME TO SPOKANE
A
photograph in the archives of the Northwest
Museum of Arts and Culture shows the famous ballerina
Anna Pavlova, on one of her many world tours, standing by
her automobile in front of the lavish Auditorium Theater in
1921. Built in 1890, the Auditorium was said to have the
largest stage in America. Before its demolition in 1934 it
was located at the corner of Post and Main in downtown
Spokane, on the site now occupied by River Park Square.
Pavlova traveled with an immense company. A program
from a performance in Portland, Oregon, on a different tour
in 1925, notes that her company included thirty dancers in
addition to herself.
As described in Keith Money’s definitive biography of
Pavlova in the context of the 1910-12 tour, “the Pavlova
Company now traveled with an entourage, requiring at
least four hundred separate pieces of luggage, including
forty packing cases for scenery and well over one hundred
trunks for costumes. On train journeys the luggage had
to be transferred from each station yard onto vans, which
then conveyed everything to the theater.