Dame Alicia Markova (1910-2004).

One of the great ballerinas of the 20th century, Dame Alicia Markova died last December just after her 94th birthday. She was a Romantic ballerina of fugitive lightness, with a delicacy as much like steel as late. She had precise Cecchettistyle feet and wraith-like arms. Sometimes it seemed that she didn't dance to music--she fused with it, and almost disappeared into it.

Born Lillian Alicia Marks in London, she studied from the age of 11 with the great Russian teacher Seraphine Astafieva. When she was 14 she joined the Diaghilev Ballets Russes, and could therefore be counted the first of the "baby ballerinas." Diaghilev changed her name to Markova, and Balanchine created Le Chant du Rossignol for her. When Diaghilev died in 1929 she returned to England, where she soon became involved with the Camargo Society, marking the beginnings of British ballet. In 1931 she became the first prima ballerina of the newly formed Vie-Wells Ballet, now The Royal Ballet, dancing Odette/Odile in the first complete Petipa/Ivanov Swan Lake to be seen outside Russia.

She left the Vic-Wells in 1935 (her successor was Margot Fonteyn) to found the Markova-Dolin Ballet with her longtime partner Anton Dolin. Three years later, she was invited by Leonide Massine to join the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, and in 1941 she moved over to the newly formed Ballet Theatre, where Dolin was already installed. At Ballet Theatre (later American Ballet Theatre) she created the leading role in Massine's Aleko, and worked with Antony Tudor, whom she had met in London before the war while dancing with Marie Rambert's Ballet Club. She created Juliet to Hugh Laing's Romeo in Tudor's 1943 Romeo and Juliet.

The war over, Markova embarked on a series of international tours with Dolin, which culminated in 1949 with the founding of London Festival Ballet, now the English National Ballet. Although she formally left Festival Ballet in 1952, she intermittently appeared with it, and with The Royal Ballet, during the course of an international stage career that ended in 1962. From 1963, the year she was awarded her D.B.E., until 1969, she was ballet director of the Metropolitan Opera House in New York, after which she continued to teach and coach.

I first saw her dance in 1948 at Covent Garden with the impeccably noble Dolin. They danced in Les Sylphides, Giselle, Swan Lake and also in two scintillating performances of The Sleeping Beauty. Even Fonteyn took notice. Over the years I saw her dance many times, but nothing quite matched the soft, luminous impact of those first Covent Garden appearances.

There have been three archetypal Giselles of the 20th century: Olga Spessivtseva, Galina Ulanova, and Markova. And then there were Chauvire, Alonso, Fonteyn, Gilmore, Fracci, Maximova, Makarova, Haydee, Seymour, Ferri ... so many Giselles, but for me really only Markova.