Mrs. Hurok and I finally succeeded in dissuading her from her avowed intention, and in convincing her that a great future for her lay in the United States.
From the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo she came to Ballet Theatre, where, under my management, she co-starred with Dolin. Her roles with that company as guest star which I arranged and paid for, together with almost one-half of her salary at other times, for Lucia Chase did not take kindly to Alicia Markova as a member of Ballet Theatre, and the American tour of the Markova-Dolin company, all of these I have dealt with at length.
During one of the seasons of the London Festival Ballet, which was organized by Dolin for the two of them, the team came to a parting of the ways. Like so many associations of this kind, the break could have been the result of any one or more of a combination of causes. One who is sincerely interested in both of them, expresses the hope that it may be only a passing difference. Yet, pursuing a course I follow in the domestic lives of my personal friends, I apply it to the artistic lives of these two, and leave it to them to work out their joint and several destinies. There are limits beyond which even a loyal and fond manager may not go with impunity.
One of the greatest ballerinas of our own or any other time, I cannot say that Markova’s triumphs have not altered her. To be sure, although she still has a manner that is sometimes reserved, outwardly timid, I nevertheless happen to know that behind it all lurks a determined, stubborn, and sometimes downright blind willfulness, coupled with a good deal of unreasonability. It was not for nothing that she earned from Leonide Massine the sobriquet of “Chinese Torture”—as Massine used to put it, “like small drops of water constantly falling on the head.”
As a dancer, Markova is in the straight and direct classical line, as Michel Fokine once observed to me, while watching her Giselle.
Bearing these things in mind, including the fact that the gods have been less than generous to her in matters of face and figure, I am deeply moved by her expertness, her ethereality, her precision, her simplicity. Yet, on the other hand, I can only deplore the stylization and mannered quality she brings to her latter-day performances. When she is at her best, Markova has something above and beyond technique: a certain evanescent, purely luminous detachment. All these things reinforce my conviction that Markova should confine herself to the great classical interpretations, and recognize her own physical limitations, even within this field. Her Giselle is in a class by itself. She has made the role her own. Personally, however, I do not find she gives me the same satisfaction as the Swan Queen, nor in Fokine’s Les Sylphides. To my way of thinking, her Swan Queen, while technically precise, lacks both that deep plumbing of the emotions and the grand, regal manner that the role requires. Her Prelude in Sylphides is spoiled, in my opinion, by excessive mannerisms.
It is in Giselle and The Nutcracker that Markova can bring joy and pleasure to an immense public, that joy the public always receives, whether they know the intricate details of ballet or not, by seeing a great classical ballerina at her best. One of Markova’s best characterizations was that of Taglioni in Dolin’s Pas de Quatre, a delightful cameo, yet today, or, at least, the last time I saw it, it, like her Prelude in Sylphides, suffered from an accretion of manner, until it bordered on the grotesque.
One of the qualities Markova has in common with Pavlova, some of whose qualities she has, is her agelessness. As I said of Pavlova, “genius knows no age,” so might it be said of Diaghileff’s “little English girl” now grown up. The great Russian painter and co-founder of the Diaghileff Ballet, Alexandre Benois, the most noted designer of Giselle, once asserted that Pavlova’s ability to transmute rather ordinary and sometimes banal material into unalloyed gold was a theatrical miracle. It is in roles for which she is peculiarly and individually almost uniquely fitted that Markova, too, is able to work a theatrical miracle.
Under the proper direction, under which she will not be left to her own devices, and will not be required to make her own decisions, but will have them made for her by a wise and intelligent director conscious of her limitations, Markova will be able the better to fulfil her destiny. It is to that desired end that I have been deeply interested in the fact that she had secured an invitation from the Sadler’s Wells Ballet, at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, for her to become, once again, a member of the company, with certain freedoms of action outside the company when her services are not required. The initial step has been taken. It is in such a setting that she belongs.
I hope she will continue in this setting.