It was her father, Vadim Boretszky-Kasadevich, who called a temporary halt to the child prodigy business, by insisting that dance be suspended for a year until she could do some school work. Discovered at Preobrajenska’s school by George Balanchine, he placed her with the de Basil company, and for a half-dozen years she remained there, save for a brief interlude with Balanchine’s short-lived _Les Ballets 1933_. It was that same year that I brought the de Basil company to America the first time, where she joined the trinity of “baby ballerinas”--Baronova and Riabouchinska, of course, being the other two. It is a matter of history how Toumanova became the American rotogravure editors’ delight; how America became Toumanova-conscious. Strong, remarkably strong though her technique was even in those days, her performances were frequently uneven. Toumanova was a temperamental dancer then, as now, and to those who know only her svelte, slender, mature beauty of today, there may be some wonder that in those days she had to fight a recurring tendency towards _embonpoint_, and excessive _embonpoint_. But there were always startling brilliancies. In _Jeux d’Enfants_ and _Cotillon_, I remember the dazzling _fouetées_. It is one of Toumanova’s boasts that she was the first dancer to do thirty-two double _fouetées_ and sixteen triples in actual performance. I am not an authority on these technical matters and can, therefore, merely record the statement. Her unsuccessful Broadway appearance (a musical called _Stars in Your Eyes_) was followed by a reunion with the de Basil Company in Australia and a short season with him at the Hollywood Theatre, in New York; and there was a later sojourn with the Massine Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo. Then Hollywood beckoned. There was one film in which she played an acting part, _Days of Glory_. The picture was certainly not much to talk about, but she married the producer-writer, Casey Robinson. Since then, she has turned up as guest-artist with one organization after another: the Paris Opera Ballet, the Marquis de Cuevas company, Anton Dolin’s Festival Ballet in London, the San Francisco Civic Ballet; a nomadic balletic existence, interrupted by another Hollywood film appearance, this time in the role of Pavlova in _Tonight We Sing_, based on my earlier book, _Impresario_.