Olga Ferri y Gert Reinholm. Buenos Aires, 1951.

Vintage gelatin silver print. Measurements: 23.8 x 17.8 cm / 9.37 x 7 in. The image is masked for editing indicating “30 ctms high. Invest". On the reverse, the photographer's wet stamp with her address on Santa Fe Avenue, and her telephone number, in the city of Buenos Aires, plus other indications handwritten in pencil.

The image shows us two dance stars representing the kiss of Romeo and Juliet, a ballet by the Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev: the Argentine dancer Olga Ferri and the German dancer Gert Reinholm, who in 1951 starred in that Russian ballet at the Colón Theater, under the direction and choreography of Tatjana Gsovsky. Olga Ferri (Buenos Aires, 1928 - 2012) studied in Paris with Víctor Gsovsky-Tatjana Gsovsky's husband-, Nicolás Zvereff and Boris Kniaseff. For decades she was the First Dancer of the Stable Ballet of the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires, and on two occasions director of that body. She was a guest star of Les Étoiles de Paris, Berliner Ballet and London's Festival Ballet, and danced in the most important theaters in the world. Her partner, Gert Reinholm (Chemnitz, Germany, 1923-Berlin, 2005) was a German ballet dancer, teacher and director. Together with Tatjana Gsovsky, Reinholm left a lasting mark on the ballet of the postwar years in Berlin. He began his career in East Berlin as a dancer at the State Opera "Unter den Linden''. He performed at the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires since 1951, and returned to the Städtische Oper in Charlottenburg in 1953. In 1955 he founded the Berlin Ballet with Tatjana Gsovsky and became a solo dancer at the Deutsche Oper Berlin, being its director from 1972 to 1990.

The image was reproduced in the book Ballet en la Argentina (with photos by Annemarie Heinrich and texts by Álvaro Sol), as figure 120. There we read “The hiring of Tatiana Gsovsky to mount some of the dances of which she is the author of the choreography at the Colón it will make the stable body live one of its best moments. ‘Don Juan de Zarizza’, ‘Romeo y Julieta’ and ‘Hamlet’ show the interpenetration of the classic and the modern in a flexible and vigorous plastic language: the artificial scholastic borders are easily overcome by this talented creator ”. The original photograph offered here presents an interesting intervention. Her faces are masked with paint, along with some crosses on the background, the inscription "30 cm high invert" and the drawing of the profile of this inverted image. These are the indications made for an edition of the image, perhaps for the press or the program, however, in the aforementioned book it appears in its original form.

Annemarie Heinrich (1912 - 1985), of German origin, was one of the most outstanding portraitists, having learned her trade already in Argentina where she moved with her family in 1926. She was characterized by artistically documenting the most relevant figures of the theater, cinema, dance and the arts in Argentina since the 1940s. A contributor to the social magazines of that time -especially, “Radiolandia” included her as the star photographer of its staff- Heinrich encouraged her studies in the management of laboratory work with remarkable results. Annemarie Heinrich is considered an icon of 20th century Argentine artistic photography. She documented with her camera the national artistic figures and all those who visited us; especially those related to the world of ballet, a particular attraction that led her to edit her great book: Ballet en la Argentina (Buenos Aires, 1962), a collector's work.

S.O.H-XI-ODM