Galina Sergeyevna Ulanova (Russian, 1910-1998) Worn and Signed Ballet Shoe. 

Worn during her ...

Galina Sergeyevna Ulanova (Russian, 1910-1998) Worn and Signed Ballet Shoe. 

Worn during her performance of Giselle in 1960.

Ulanova's parents were the soloists of the Mariinsky theatre and danced with Anna Pavlova. Later, her father became a director and her mother taught ballet. Ulanova recalled that she never had a choice to pick a career and due to her parents profession, ballet was her only option.

Konstantin Stanislavsky, fascinated with her acting style, implored her to take part in his stage productions. In 1944, when her fame reached Joseph Stalin, he had her transferred to the Bolshoi Theatre, where she would be the prima ballerina assoluta for 16 years.

Ulanova was regarded as a great actress as well as a dancer, and when she was finally allowed to tour abroad at the age of 46, enraptured British papers wrote that Galina Ulanova in London knew the greatest triumph of any individual dancer since Anna Pavlova. 

Ulanova was one of the few dancers to be awarded Hero of Socialist Labor and the only one to receive this honor twice. She was also awarded the highest exclusively artistic national title, Peoples Artist of the USSR and she was awarded the Stalin Prize in 1941, 1946, 1947, 1950, and the Lenin Prize in 1957. She was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1960.