From @joannechocolat

Selika Lazevski was an #equestrienne in Belle Époque Paris. In 1891, she was the subject of a series of six portraits at the studio of Paul Nadar in Paris.

Little is known of her life, but she was a horsewoman who rode haute école at the Nouveau Cirque (1886-1926) on rue Saint-Honoré, Paris.

On a personal note: today I (also) learned about haute école:

'The first women to perform on horseback in the circus were trick riders & acrobats with tantalizingly short skirts, bare arms, and exposed pantaloons.

In the 1830s, when the sidesaddle was reinvented, some women moved on to the haute école, the striking, disciplined '#equestrian ballet' that had evolved from Xenophon’s 'On Horsemanship' to the power play of early-modern court carousels & cavalry-school drills.

These écuyères de haute école were among the first women to undertake this most masculine and prestigious of equestrian sports as professionals, and they did it à l’amazone (sidesaddle), en amazone (in a riding habit), & as amazones (the savage, romantic warriors of the Bronze Age transformed into brave but genteel sportswomen).

To the dance steps of the passage and the skipping one-tempi canter, the horse & écuyère added perilous stunts: the horse walking on its hind legs as its mistress lay on his back ...; the horse and amazone jumping high hurdles ...; the horse skipping a rope turned by its rider ...' - by Susanna Forrest in The Paris Review

#CelebratingWomen #BlackHistory