Anna’s primary teachers at the Vaganova Academy were Ludmila Komissarova, a direct pupil of Agrippina Vaganova, and Inna Zubkovskaya, an esteemed principal ballerina of the Mariinsky Theatre (Kirov Ballet).
An exceptional, dark-eyed beauty nicknamed the ‘Black Pearl’ whose ancestry included Jewish roots, born Inna Borisovna Izraelyeva, Inna Zubkovskaya was a celebrated ballet dancer at home with the Kirov (now Mariinsky), as well as abroad where she was the first to perform the most famous ballet role of Odette-Odile in Swan Lake at the Metropolitan Opera House in Manhattan in 1961.