Eliana Pavlova is a Japanese ballerina from Russia, born in Tbilisi in the Caucasus. She was naturalized in 1937 and her Japanese name is Kirishima Eriko. She taught ballet in Yokohama and later in Kamakura, and is known as the first person to take ballet root in Japan, which lead to being called the "Mother of Japanese Ballet".

It is commonly believed that she is of a white Russian aristocratic lineage, but Suzuki Akira describes in his book "Portrait of Ballerina" that she may have been born into a family of traveling entertainers.

She escaped from the Russian Revolution with his mother and sister and entered Japan in July 1919 after passing through Helsinki, Harbin, and Shanghai. She performed in Kobe, and in October of that fall, he performed in Asakusa at the "Six-Country Union Kabuki Ongakudan Performance" and performed "Dying Swan" and other plays. The following year, 1921, she was selected to star in the silent movie "Kimiyo Shirazuya". Edit Biography