History

Franziska Cordes was born in Cologne to a working class family. Her father worked as a builder and stone mason and she was the youngest of six siblings. The family lived in a small home on the wrong side of the river and getting by was a struggle. Her parents were devoutly Catholic and Franziska attended Sunday school, where she caught the eyes of her teachers due to her intelligence and due to her strange and obsessive habits, which transferred in this time of her life to a neurotic devotion to prayer. Her mother happily agreed to send her to a nearby convent to further her education. Little Ziska was on her way to become a nun, but was yet too young. After school she was sent on errands to different clerical institutions, mainly to clean and to garden. Her mother died when Ziska was nine years old and her siblings and her father moved out into the rural Eifel region to a farmstead owned by her paternal family. The girl was to stay behind with the nuns to one day become one herself. Ziska soon moved to a Catholic school and boarding house for girls in the inner city, where she suffered terrible abuse. After half a year she ran away.

Her only relation left in the city was her scandalous velvet-dressed aunt Angelika, who was an actress with a local theater troupe. She took in the girl and gave her the choice to move out to the family farm, or to come with her to Berlin, where Angelika wanted to further her acting career. Ziska, much attached to her fascinating aunt (whom her mother used to forbid her from seeing!) decided to go to Berlin.

With that, her life trajectory changed from the convent to the stage. Franziska first acted alongside her aunt in plays in Berlin, then started to dance and trained at the court opera in Berlin under an Italian Ballet Master.

At 16 years old she entered the corps de ballet at the Staatsoper in Berlin and quickly rose through the ranks. At 19 she was prima, and at 20 she left for the next bigger pond, which was Vienna. From there, her career blossomed and took her to St. Petersburg, Paris and eventually London.

By the time Ziska Cordes arrived in the British Capital, she was a celebrated star. She danced for Royals, sampled the social scenes of major European cities and learned that it took not only talent and passion, of which she had plenty, but also bite and strategy and a cult of personality to rise above and stay relevant. Her ethereal and angelic looks did their part, as did her knack for selling herself to the correct bidder — the one who could do more for her than gift her pretty things.

It was in Paris where she really grew into herself and bumped into the underground movements of occultism and new thought that flourished in the city. To London she came at 24, for the money.

After two years of lucrative contracts, she can say for herself that she really made it. She owns a house, she is flush with coins, all she is missing is the right match to marry and secure her exceptional climb of the social ladder — she ought to have taken care of that in her mid-twenties at the latest, but alas, she has not. As rumour has it, she was much too busy finding company with her very close girlfriends. Strangely, she is not much perturbed by the fact. Can a woman as coveted as the principal dancer of the Royal Italian Opera be serious about ascending to spinsterhood?