Uploaded February 2018 | Updated September 2026, 1 hour ago

---

This is footage of Royal Swedish Ballet Prima Ballerina, Jenny Hasselqvist (1894-1978), performing her main dance sequence in 'Sumurun' (1920), a movie directed by Ernst Lubitsch in which the ballerina plays the title role.

The plot can be summarised:

“A company of travelling performers arrive at a fictional oriental city. It includes the beautiful dancer Janaia, the hunchback clown Yeggar who is lovesick for Janaia and the Old Lady who loves Yeggar. The Slave Trader Achmed wants to sell Janaia to the Sheik for his harem. At the Palace, the Sheik finds out that his favourite, Sumurun, is in love with Nur al Din, the handsome clothes merchant. He wants to condemn her to death but his son obtains her pardon. After seeing Janaia dancing, the Sheik is keen to buy her. Yeggar is desperate and takes a magic pill which make him look dead. His body is hidden in a chest. The women from the harem come to Nur al Din's shop and hide him in a chest so that he can be brought into the Palace. The chest containing Yeggar's body is also brought to the Palace and the Old Lady manages to revive him. The Sheik finds Janaia making love to his son and kills both of them. He then finds Sumurun making love to Nur al Din and wants to kill them but he is stabbed in the back by Yagger.”

The film is referencing the perfumed exoticism of first era of the Ballets Russes ballets, such as ‘Schéhérazade’ (1910).

There is not a great deal of dancing by Jenny Hasselqvist but I still thought it might be worth posting.

I have added as the audio track for this sequence from the silent film a section of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s ‘Schéhérazade’.

Lia Constantinou, from the Facebook group ‘Ballets Russes’ tells:

“It seems that Fokine had conceived the idea to establish a Swedish ballet company rival to the Ballets Russes. His idea was materialised in 1920 when Rolf de Maré founded the "Ballets Suedois”."

Enjoy!

Enjoy!