Studio photograph of Tamara Karsavina in Thamar. The photograph was probably comissioned for Comoedia Illustre, a colourised version was collaged on the cober of the magazine on 1 June 1912. .The music was by Mily Balakirev and the choreography by Mikhail Fokine, with costumes designed by Leon Bakst. Thamar was first performed by Serge Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes on 20 May 1912 at the Théâtre du Châtelet, Paris and in London on 12 June 1912 at the Royal Opera House. It remained in the company’s repertoire until 1929.

The ballet, inspired by a poem by Lermontov and Balakirev's score, tells of Thamar, Queen of Georgia who lures strangers to her castle above the Dariel Gorge and after a night of passion kills them. As the Pall Mall Gazette claimed ‘It is a terrible dream of Eastern lust, a barbaric swirl of music colour, and life'. Cyril Beaumont noted that Karsavina’s interpretation of Thamar was ‘her greatest achievement in the art of mime.’

Thamar’s costume was described as ‘a light crimson caftan which reaches to her knees, over which depends a short skirt, powdered with diamond-shaped pieces of blue satin. A cream-coloured bodice with blue and white striped sleeves leaves bare her shapely throat.
Her waist is clasped by a belt, from which protrudes the hilt of a dagger, perhaps a subtle hint of what is to follow. Her hair is gathered into long plaits, threaded with a string of pearls. Her head is surmounted by a mitre-shaped head-dress, from which a long blue veil falls over her shoulders.’