Thamara De Swirsky

De Swirsky was publicized in 1911 as having the "most musical body in the world" and created a sensation in the U.S. with her barefoot dancing. Reviewers assured readers that, while her feet were bare, she did not dance nude. "Her costumes are triumphs of sartorial amplitude," declared one disappointed critic. "They leave everything to the imagination." She also performed a "bat dance" with sheer fabric wings. She was the last advertised performer at the Coliseum Garden Theatre in Raton, New Mexico, before it was destroyed in a 1911 fire. She played piano during some performances. Beyond vaudeville, she appeared as a dancer at the Metropolitan Opera in Orfeo ed Euridice and Zar und Zimmermann (1909), with the Boston Opera in Lakmé (1910), and in a 1912 silent film. In 1913, she promoted Seduction perfume.

Her opinions and whims made news. She smoked cigars and cigarettes, and in 1910 she insured each of her toes for $10,000. In 1914, she was in Anna Pavlova's company, and her pleas for a more humid New York hotel room were reported in the New York Times. Italian artist Piero Tozzi painted her portrait, "His Flame of Life", after she turned away his romantic interest. During World War I she performed in New York. In 1919, she appeared in a silent film, The Mad Woman. In 1910, John Jacob Astor bought 25 seats for one of her concerts in Newport, Rhode Island, and sat alone to watch. In 1933, reports claimed she was engaged to Frederick G. Fischer, but his family committed him to an asylum to prevent the match.

She loved Los Angeles, settling there after her dance career, teaching and playing piano. She died in Los Angeles in 1961, weeks after a traffic accident during a storm, aged 73. A statuette by Paolo Troubetzkoy is in the Getty Museum, and her unpublished memoirs have been discovered.