Dance in Film · 1925
The Dying Swan (1925)
Anna Pavlova's surviving film of Michel Fokine's signature solo preserves the original interpreter whose performance made The Dying Swan synonymous with expressive classical ballet, giving LODance a direct screen record rather than a later reconstruction.
The Dying Swan is a 1925 dance film centred on ballroom and social dance. For dancers, it's a chance to see the style performed on screen — the phrasing, partnering, and musicality that the same dances carry onto a real floor.
Jump to the 1 indexed dance sequence ↓
Where to watch: Embedded archival footage on the verified Anna Pavlova LODance Legend page was live 2026-08-08. BFI catalogs the film as 1925; Il Cinema Ritrovato documents that the Hollywood footage was shot in 1924 and digitized in HD by the BFI National Archive in 2024. No separate official public stream or current retail edition was verified.
The dance sequences in The Dying Swan
1 sequence — what is danced, by whom, and where to find it.
Anna Pavlova’s complete “Dying Swan” solo
Classical BalletDanced by Anna Pavlova · Choreography Michel Fokine
The fluttering arms, trembling bourrée, folding torso, and final collapse of Pavlova’s white-feathered swan.
A single sustained classical-ballet solo turns continuous bourrée and intensely mobile arms into character: Pavlova’s increasingly broken phrasing makes the bird seem to resist death rather than merely illustrate it.
Open the film at this point · The full film is on YouTube; the link opens at this sequence. The whole surviving 1925 film is one short solo rather than multiple defensible scenes. BFI dates the film to 1925 and identifies Pavlova performing Fokine’s 1905 choreography; Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre independently credits Fokine. The opened LODance Legend page embedded the 1925 footage on 2026-08-15, but the direct YouTube endpoint was throttled during verification, so clip_url remains blank. No edition-specific timestamp was inferred.
Poster artwork and title data from TMDB. This site uses TMDB and the TMDB APIs but is not endorsed, certified, or otherwise approved by TMDB.