Anna Ludmila

Anna Ludmila, born Jean Marie Kaley on January 12, 1903, in the Englewood neighborhood of Chicago, was an American ballet dancer who performed on Broadway, with the Chicago Opera Ballet, and in Europe before transitioning to ballroom dancing and teaching. She died on April 18, 1990. Her name appears in records under several spellings, including Anna Ludmilla and Ana Ludmilla.

Kaley began studying dance at age five under Mabel Wentworth in Chicago. During her eighth-grade year in 1915, Wentworth arranged for Kaley and a few fellow students to meet Anna Pavlova, whose company was performing in the city while Pavlova was simultaneously filming a movie near Midway Gardens theatre. The encounter proved formative, and Kaley began collecting photographs of Pavlova from that point forward. She subsequently left Wentworth's school to train with Serge Oukrainsky and Andreas Pavley, two former male danseurs from Pavlova's company who had founded a new school in Chicago. After auditioning for their newly organized troupe, Kaley became, by 1916 at age thirteen, the principal ballerina of the Oukrainsky-Pavley Ballet, described as America's first internationally touring ballet company. It was at this time that she adopted the Russianized stage name Anna Ludmila, a decision made against her father's wishes and one that contributed to an estrangement between them. The company toured American cities across states including Nebraska, Missouri, Wisconsin, and Massachusetts, and Ludmila left high school to pursue the career professionally.

In 1917, Ludmila made her New York City debut at Carnegie Hall performing with the New York Symphony, where she met conductor Walter Damrosch. Through her association with Oukrainsky and Pavley, who were hired by Maestro Cleofonte Campanini as principal soloists for the Chicago Opera Association, Ludmila also began performing with the Chicago Opera Ballet, the dance company attached to that organization, which later became known as the Chicago Civic Opera Company. The Chicago Opera Ballet served three functions: supplying trained dancers for opera productions, entertaining audiences between acts, and generating additional revenue through dance-only performances. During this period Ludmila was introduced to Scottish opera soprano and film actress Mary Garden, who became a mentor and advised her on contract negotiation, formal dress, and how to handle marriage proposals from admirers.

In 1920, Ludmila relocated to New York City and appeared on Broadway in the musical Tip Top, which starred Fred Stone and opened at the Globe Theatre on October 5, 1920. The production ran for 246 performances before closing in May 1921. She was next engaged to dance in the Broadway musical Tangerine alongside partner Frank Holbrook, in which she played the role of Arameda and performed numbers including "The Sea of the Tropics" and "Dance Tangerine." Tangerine opened on August 9, 1921, and ran for 361 performances, closing on August 26, 1922. Following that engagement, Adolph Bolm, a Russian immigrant who had been appointed ballet master of the Chicago Civic Opera, invited Ludmila to return to Chicago as première danseuse of the Chicago Opera Ballet. She was nineteen years old at the time.

Three years later Ludmila left Chicago and moved to Europe to continue her training and expand her career. She studied with master teachers including Lubov Egorova, Nicolai Legat, and Margaret Craske. In Paris she danced ballet numbers at the Folies Bergère alongside Josephine Baker and also toured the European ballroom circuit, performing at resorts with various partners, among them the French ex-boxer Georges Carpentier. In 1928, Bronislava Nijinska, sister of Vaslav Nijinsky, hired Ludmila as a soloist with Les Ballets de Madame Rubinstein, a company founded by Ida Rubinstein and based in France. During one of the company's European performances, impresario Serge Diaghilev was in the audience and subsequently offered Ludmila a contract to join the Ballets Russes as a soloist, but Nijinska declined to release her from her existing contract. After her contract with the Rubinstein company concluded, Ludmila moved to England to dance as the partner of Anton Dolin, who had also watched her perform. George Balanchine created a pas de deux for the two of them, and for a period Dolin and Ludmila were engaged to marry. Choreographer Frederick Ashton selected her for the leading female role in Pomona, which he premiered in the inaugural production of the Camargo Society. During her time in England, American painter Charles Sneed Williams painted her portrait for a London exhibition, and she appeared in the film The Night Porter.

Ludmila's career as a classical ballet dancer ended around 1930 when, while performing in a London revue, she caught the toe of her pointe shoe on a nail and snapped her Achilles tendon. Unable to regain the strength in her right leg necessary for classical ballet, she shifted her professional focus to ballroom dancing, partnering with European ballroom dancer Georges Fontana. The two traveled to the United States to perform at a club in New York City, though the partnership lasted only a few months, after which Ludmila moved to Indianapolis, Indiana. She was thirty years old.

On January 12, 1933, her birthday, Ludmila married Jack Broderick, who had trained with Oukrainsky and Pavley. Together they opened a dance studio in Indianapolis, and Ludmila also taught through the Chicago Association of Dancing Masters. The couple had a son named Jan, and the marriage eventually ended. Toward the end of World War II she married Howard Gee, and when his work with an airline company took him to Peru, Ludmila, Jan, and her mother Isabel relocated with him. The family subsequently moved to Panama and settled in the Canal Zone.

In Panama, Ludmila headed the ballet division of the National School of Dance, the Escuela Nacional de Danzas, which had been founded in 1947 by Cecilia Pinel de Remón, wife of Panamanian president General José Antonio Remón Cantera. Margot Fonteyn, who had married Panamanian diplomat Roberto Arias, sought a coach in Panama City and selected Ludmila, and the two became close friends. Through her association with Fonteyn, Ludmila was authorized to teach the Royal Academy of Dance syllabus, which she combined with the Enrico Cecchetti method in her instruction.