the first to perform the role of Mercedes in the ballet The Andalusian by her husband when it premiered in 1915. Smirnova was promoted to prima ballerina in 1916 and that same year was among a few dancers who performed at the Imperial Theater of Tokyo to great acclaim. The tour, under the leadership of Smirnova's husband , was first tour of Japan by a Russian ballet corps. On the return trip, the troupe performed in Harbin, China and passed through Chita, Russia on their way back to Saint Petersburg. During the Russian Civil War, many noted dancers left Russia, which from 1918 left Smirnova as the only prima ballerina still working at the Mariinsky Theater. The theater name changed during the war to the State Academic Theater of Opera and Ballet (). During the seasons from 1918 to 1920, her most acclaimed role was as Aurora in The Sleeping Beauty. In 1919, she danced in the premiere of Romance of the Rose by in the role of Rosa and then on 8 February 1920, performed her last role on the Russian stage. European career Soon after the performance, Smirnova and Romanov, along with Romanov's mother and daughter, Natalia, and other artists, clandestinely left Russia fleeing from the Bolshevik soldiers in 1920. Traveling in a hay cart, the group made their way to Romania and briefly performed in Bucharest. Then the artists moved to Berlin, where Romanov and Smirnova founded the Russian Theater a few months after their arrival in 1921. The theater was reorganized as the () with the German dancer, Elsa Krüger the following year. Financed by a wealthy German patron, the theater staged a broad repertoire dedicated to Russian arts and included ballet, opera and pantomime, with Krüger, Obukhov, and Smirnova as the principal dancers. Based in Berlin, the company toured capitals of Europe performing one-act ballets like Les millions d'Arlequin by Riccardo Drigo, Pastoral by Christoph Willibald Gluck, and Pictures of a Boyar Wedding, among others. They staged a critically acclaimed adaptation of Giselle, but many of their performances were avant-garde choreographies created by Romanov for Smirnova. In 1924, the troupe secured a seven-week engagement at the London Coliseum, which proved unsuccessful. It was followed by a financially costly tour in Spain, which caused their backer to reduce the size of the company by almost half. Struggling financially, from the fall of 1924 to spring 1925,