Inna Zubkovskaya

Inna Borisovna Zubkovskaya was a Soviet and Russian ballerina. She was trained at the Bolshoi Theatre and graduated in 1941. She immediately joined the Kirov Ballet where she remained until her retirement in 1970. According to Meisner, "her flawless technique, allied to a sensitive reticence, fitted the Mariinsky's elegant purity and they invited her to join". She was half-Jewish with an exceptional, dark-eyed beauty - earning the nickname the Black Pearl. She then became a teacher of the company until her death. She married twice: first to Nikolai Zubkovsky - whose name she kept for the stage - before divorcing him and marrying Svyatoslav Kuznetsov. Both her husbands were dancers. and her daughter, Katerina, and her son, Nikolai, both became dancers in the Mariinsky.