Tamara Toumanova trying to keep warm on the freezing cold stage during a dress rehearsal of Aurora's Wedding from The Sleeping Beauty

While researching a ballet in the 1937 Ballets Russes Repretoire I came across this charming photo of ballerina Tamara Toumanova wearing a vintage fur jacket while trying to keep warm on a freezing stage during a dress rehearsal for Aurora’s Wedding scene in The Sleeping Beauty. The cavernous old theaters were often very cold which is one reason ballerinas and opera singers needed to have a cozy fur coat on hand at all times! I love this photo because it illustrates such a practical and personal use for a fur coat!

This image is from the Geoffrey Ingram collection of ballet photographs from the Ballets Russes Australian tour, 1936-1940 and features Tamara Toumanova, Michael Panaieff, Anton Vlassoff and Oleg Tupine, 1940.