Remembering Doubrovska: elegant Balanchine ballerina kept a close eye on her students--onstage and off.

A FLORAL SCENT FILLED THE AIR AS Mme. Felia Doubrovska entered the studio soundlessly in a fluid stream of little steps--on demi-pointe. Class was soon to begin. Her distinctive perfume, Bellogia, evoked an atmosphere of rose, willow, and wisteria. It was 1951 and I was 14 years old, with three years of study behind me. Now I was enrolled at the School of American Ballet, George Balanchine's training ground for the New York City Ballet.

Carmelita Maracci and Bronislava Nijinska, my first California teachers, were both icons and iconoclasts, inventors of dance and not bound to the traditional. But Doubrovska personified something different--femininity, glamour, and style.

Doubrovska's elegant working attire surprised me. She wore a short dress, all of one color, with blues in the pale to dark tones predominating. She also wore decorative earrings, and at her waist a scarf drifted out as she demonstrated. Once she delighted the entire class with a yellow frock, a lovely sight on this graceful woman with dark eyes and hair. The whole class uttered an "Ahhh." What luck! We were going to dance with a daffodil.

With her elongated frame, ideal proportions, and contemporary look, Doubrovska made superb raw material for Balanchine. He chose her for the original Siren in Prodigal Son, created for Diaghilev's Ballets Russes in 1929. He treasured her talent. She was the first of Balanchine's tall who were just starting to arrive at SAB in the 1960s. In fact, Balanchine created a special class for her to teach only the girls. He wanted them to see the perfection of her footwork--off pointe and on--and to experience the elegance of her epaulement. She could be profoundly helpful to all.

In the 1950s, as well as earlier in her performing days, Doubrovska possessed a lithe, lyrical figure and her insteps had a sensuous acute curve. She conducted an inventive class, and she would work on what she felt were her pupils' weaknesses. Instead of just presenting the step that she wanted to improve, she would work around it circuitously, offering exercises that employed aspects of it but not the step in its entirety. We never suspected what we were working on. After a while the step would be shown, and I'd say to myself, "So it was fouettes." Often her class held the suspense of a mystery novelette. She also incorporated into her classes solos from the classics as well as fresh choreography she had just seen the night before at an NYCB performance. We practiced variations on real variations.

AFTER A VERY FEW CLASSES, Doubrovska and I fell in love. Doubrovska responded to some quality of mine; and my response was reciprocal. I adored her. Doubrovska never had any children, and it's no wonder. The era of her youth was a time of wrenching upheaval: a revolution in Russia, two world wars, and a life in constant flux with work here and there as ballet companies appeared and disappeared with equal rapidity. I was proud to be Doubrovska's newest little pupil, and I understood that I was her child of the ballet.

My new teacher was also employing her keen eye to observe me out of class. Doubrovska noticed that I walked around SAB with an unsatisfactory gait. In California, my stride suggested a mountain man who was rough, tough, and ready to cross the Sierra Nevada at the drop of a leotard. Doubrovska advised me otherwise; there were no mountain men at SAB. I must take shorter steps with my legs closer together, have lighter footfalls, and not roll from side to side like a bullterrier. At her request, I altered some of my idiosyncrasies, but I still ran for the bus with a determined gallop.

In late December of 1952, Balanchine invited me to become an apprentice with the company. My first appearance was to be in the corps de ballet in Symphony in C's second movement. On the evening of my debut, a bouquet for me was sent up to the dressing room. When I read the inscription I began to cry. I didn't realize that Doubrovska knew about my appearance. The bouquet itself was a nosegay of violets with a pink rose in the center. It was a little treasure, created with panache. When I thanked Madame and told her how much I loved her gift, she told me Anna Pavlova had sent her a nosegay just like mine when she gave her first performance long ago at the Maryinsky Theater. Even without knowing this, I knew that there was something magical about those flowers; they were radiant.

Doubrovska continued to attend my performances and offered suggestions for my hair, makeup, and technique. She ran one hand over the surface of her hair, suggesting more allure with a stylized upsweep. "Don't look the same way every time you go onstage," she emphasized. Doubrovska always claimed that she had eyes everywhere, even in the back of her head, and I believed her. One day her husband, Pierre Vladimiroff, showed up at a matinee and gave her a report. I imagined that this was the kind of attention she had received at the Imperial Ballet School, from which she had graduated in 1913. The legendary Olga Spessivtseva was her classmate and best friend. They must have had a wonderful teacher.

Doubrovska never ceased to be a source of inspiration and help to me as I proceeded onward with my career. Thank you, Madame, for taming the mountain man in me with your beautiful demonstration of steps, your charming and graceful style, and your generosity of spirit.

Felia Doubrovska (1896-1981)

Felia Doubrovska, born in 1896, was trained at the Imperial Ballet School in St. Petersburg (renamed the Vaganova Academy in 1957) and made a dramatic escape from the Soviet Union in 1920 on skis via Finland. She became a star of Serge Diaghilev's Ballets Russes in the 1920s. Between 1926 and 1936, she danced in twelve Balanchine ballets, creating the role of Polyhymnia in Apollon musagete (later Apollo) in 1928, and the Siren in Prodigal Son in 1929. After Diaghilev's death, she danced with the de Basil Ballets Russes and other companies and was briefly a principal dancer with the Metropolitan Opera Ballet. At Balanchine's invitation, she taught at the School of American Ballet from December 1948 until shortly before her death in 1981. ballerinas, and she was able to help many of the taller dancers

Allegra Kent danced with New York City Ballet from 1953 to 1983, becoming a principal in 1957. Her autobiography, Once a Dancer, is available in paperback from St. Martin's Press.