Baroness Nadine Wulffius

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Baroness Nadine Wulffius (1899-1992) was born Nadine (Nadezdha Fyodovna) Krivko in September 1899 in Riga to Moscow University educated botanist and historian Fyodor Krivko (author of a well-known botany text) and his wife Countess Kladiya Alekseyev-Yavosluski. She was a student at the Petersburg University and the Imperial Ballet School. Her first husband was the son of the Greek ambassador Mario Marceva-Marcenos. She escaped from Russia into Latvia in 1922 and worked at the Riga University and danced with the Riga Ballet under the name Marceva.Her parents and brothers (former officers in the Czarist Army) were murdered by the Communists. Her second husband was a German opera singer Conrad Henzel. Her third husband was Baron Wulffius of Latvia. Her husband and his mistress (who was mistaken for the Baroness) were executed by the communists in World War II. Baroness Nadine Wulffius fled with her son to Germany. In 1953 she went to Australia where she established her own ballet school and co-founded the West Australian Ballet company with Madame Kira Bousloff her best friend. She was the first President of the West Australian Ballet Company. Her expertise was in choreography and hand movements. She was an expert on the history of dance and taught this to the ballet students until she was 80 when she retired to live with her granddaughter Tamara Bartram on a wheatbelt farm in rural Western Australia where she died on February 6, 1992. She also taught Scientific Russia at the University of Western Australia and was a translator for the visiting Russian ballets.