Grace and intelligence, with a will of tungsten

Financial Times

Grace and intelligence, with a will of tungsten

By Clement Crisp
Published: December 3 2004 02:00 | Last updated: December 3 2004 11:45

Lilian Alicia Marks, who died on December 1 on the night after her 94th birthday, made her debut as a dancer at the age of 10 in pantomime at Kennington, billed as "the child Pavlova". Her gifts took her to classes given by the Russian teacher Serafine Astafieva, and here Serge Diaghilev saw her and engaged her for his company.

Aged just 14, Alicia Marks became Markova, member of the Ballets Russes, with Balanchine's staging of Stravinsky's Le Rossignol (in which she was the nightingale) for her debut. For the next five years, the Monte Carlo opera house and tours throughout Europe (with either an over-protective governess or her mother as companion) were Markova's world. Watching Diaghilev's stagings provided a marvellous education for the girl the impresario called his "English daughter".

In 1929 Diaghilev died and his company disbanded. Markova returned to England, to become a vital figure in the infant British ballet being shaped by Ninette de Valois and Marie Rambert. She worked for Rambert, then joined de Valois' Vic-Wells company in its first season, as a ballerina able to justify stagings of the "classics" (Swan Lake, Giselle, The Nutcracker).

In 1935, with her Diaghilev colleague Anton Dolin, she formed the Markova-Dolin Ballet, which toured Britain for two years - with Markova sustaining an astounding eight performances a week in leading roles. She was then invited by Leonid Massine to return to her Ballets Russes roots and become a leading ballerina with the Monte Carlo troupe, and for the next three years she led the company with Alexandra Danilova, in Europe and in long tours criss-crossing America. Exiled to the US by war, she was adored wherever she danced, and in 1941 joined the young Ballet Theatre, giving legendary performances as Giselle, in Massine's Aleko and in Antony Tudor's Romeo and Juliet. Her genius lay in the purity and sensitivity of her dancing - sublimely musical and ravishing in technical ease - and in the imaginative control she exerted over huge audiences, performing happily in the vastness of the Hollywood Bowl as well as in big opera houses. John Martin of The New York Times saluted her as "the greatest dancer who has ever lived", an accolade that Markova greeted with the words: "That's all very well, but I'm the one who has to live up to it."

In 1948, Markova (with Dolin, her partner) returned to London and conquered a new public at Covent Garden as Giselle, as Aurora, as Odette/Odile. She and Dolin next undertook a series of tours from which grew Festival Ballet in 1950. The success of the company was owed to the combination of international stars and a wise and traditional repertory. Markova withdrew from the troupe following injury, and the remaining decade of her career - she retired in 1963 - was spent as a guest artist in Europe and America. She was a box-office darling: the announcement "Markova in Giselle" brought interminable queues outside any theatre. Markova was director of the ballet at the Metropolitan Opera House, New York, throughout the 1960s and then, for five years, distinguished professor at the University of Cincinnati. She returned to London in 1974 to teach, to stage ballets and to serve her art. She was made DBE in 1963.

Markova was one of the greatest ballerinas of the 20th century. She had a delicate physique, a tungsten technique masked by a gentle appearance, and a flawless musical understanding. Everything she did had to appear effortless, which she achieved by an implacable will and total concentration. I adored her, and her knowledge and her prodigious memory for dances and dancers taught me infinitely much ("Alicia, tell me about . . . ." "Well, dear, I remember Mr Diaghilev saying . . ."). Uniquely, she had ballets created for her by Fokine, Massine, Nijinska, Balanchine, Ashton and Tudor. A fascinating portrait of her, still working at the age of 90, appears in Dominique Delouche's film Markova, La Légende (2001). Until the end of her life she remained a marvel of grace and dance- intelligence.

Clement Crisp

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