Adolph Bolm was born in St. Petersburg in 1884, entered the Imperial Ballet School in 1894, and became a dancer with the Maryinsky Theatre in 1903. Bolm spent less than a decade with the company, during which time he led Maryinsky tours to Scandinavia and Europe, and served as partner to ballerina Anna Pavlova. In 1909, he began performing with Serge Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, excelling in character roles such as Pierre in Michel Fokine’s Le Carnaval (1909) and the Moor in Petrouchka (1911). Perhaps his most vivid role was that of the Chief Warrior in Fokine’s “Polovtsian Dances,” from Act 2 of Aleksandr Borodin’s opera Prince Igor , a ballet remembered for its particularly savage and exotic choreography. While dancing with the Ballets Russes, Bolm often partnered with ballerina Tamara Karsavina. He danced the Tsarevitch role to her Firebird in The Firebird (1910). Bolm left the company in 1917 after sustaining an injury and because Diaghilev was unwilling to allow Bolm to create ballets for the company. (Diaghilev instead promoted Vaslav Nijinsky as choreographer.) Bolm went to America where he established the touring company Ballet Intime. It was known for its Eastern dance styles and featured such dancers as American Ruth Page, Roshanara, and Michio Ito. In the 1930s, Agnes de Mille and Martha Graham performed as guest artists for the company. In 1918, Bolm choreographed and danced in the ballet Falling Leaves for the Broadway revue Miss 1917 . In 1918-1919, he staged and performed in two Ballets Russes de Serge Diaghilev works, Le Coq d’Or and Petrouchka , at the Metropolitan Opera House. He later staged these works, as well as other Ballets Russes ballets, in Buenos Aires and San Francisco.

Bolm spent most of the 1920s in Chicago where he worked as ballet master, premier danseur, and choreographer for the Chicago Civic Opera and the Chicago Allied Artists organization. Two significant works that he choreographed during this period were the 1919 ballet titled The Birthday of the Infanta from 1919, based on the Oscar Wilde short story, with music by frequent collaborator John Alden Carpenter, and the 1922 ballet Krazy Kat , based on the cartoon by George Herriman. He created several one-act ballets, often using designs by Nicolas Remisoff, both for the Chicago company and for his own Adolph Bolm Ballet company. The Bolm Ballet toured the United States and frequently featured Ruth Page and guest artist Vera Mirova. Louis Horst provided musical direction. In 1928, the Library of Congress, under the patronage of Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge, commissioned Igor Stravinsky’s score Apollo Musagète for Bolm. Bolm also premiered the ballets Arlecchinata , Alt-Wien , and Pavane pour une Infante Défuncte at the Library of Congress that year.

During the 1930s Bolm worked in California, acting as ballet master for the San Francisco Opera, and unofficially establishing the San Francisco Ballet, from 1933-1936. He was hired to stage the dance scenes for the film The Mad Genius (1930), directed by John Barrymore. It is for this film that Bolm created his ballet Le Ballet Mécanique . In 1922, Bolm had collaborated on an experimental short film, Danse Macabre (to Camille Saint-Saëns’ score of the same name) with dancer Ruth Page and director Dudley Murphy. In 1941 he would work on two more films, The Men in her Life and The Corsican Brothers . Bolm frequently re-mounted and re-choreographed Le Ballet Mécanique , presenting it in 1930 at the Hollywood Bowl as The Spirit of the Factory , and later under its original title with the San Francisco Opera. He continued to choreograph for the San Francisco Opera, creating works such as Danse Noble (1934) and the three-part work Bach Cycle (1936). In 1940, Bolm joined the newly-established Ballet Theatre where he choreographed Peter and the Wolf to Sergei Prokofiev’s score. He also served as company regisseur from 1942-1943, and staged his version of Firebird in 1945. He choreographed his last ballet, Mephisto , for the San Francisco Civic Ballet in 1947.

Besides choreographing and staging Ballets Russes works throughout the United States, Bolm also taught ballet, opening studios in Chicago and Hollywood and instructing a generation of American dancers such as Cyd Charisse. He died in 1951 in Hollywood, leaving behind a legacy as dancer, choreographer, and teacher.