As a person there is something about her that is at once naive and ingenuous and, at the same time, deep and grave and tragic. She cries still when she is happy, and is also able to cry when she is sad. She adores to be praised; but, unlike some other dancers I know, she is also anxious for criticism. She solicits it. And when she feels the criticism is sound, she does her best to correct--at least for the moment--the faults that have prompted it. Her devotion to her mother--“Mamochka”--herself an attractive, voluble, and highly emotional woman, is touching and sometimes a shade pathetic. Toumanova’s whole life, career, and story have been, for the most part, the thrice-familiar tale of the White Russian _émigré_. Like all _émigré_ stories, hers is extremely sentimental. Sentiment and sentimentality play a big part in Tamara’s life. She is, I feel, unbreakable, unquenchable. She is, in her maturity, even more beautiful than she was as a “baby ballerina.” She is, I suppose, precisely the popular conception of what a glamorous _ballerina_ is, or at least should be. Her personality is that of a complete theatrical extrovert. The last row of the gallery is her theatre target. Hers is not a subtle personality. It is a sort of motion picture idea of a _ballerina assoluta_, a sort of reincarnation of the fascinating creatures from whose carriages adoring balletomanes unhitched the horses and hauled them to Maxim’s for supper, dining the course of which the creatures were toasted in vintage champagne drunk from slippers. It doesn’t really matter that her conception is a bit dated. With Toumanova it is effective. Tamara’s conception of the ballerina in these terms is deliberate. She admits her desire is to smash the audience as hard as she can. With her a straight line is veritably the shortest distance between two points, and no _ballerina_ makes the distance between herself and her audience so brief. This conception has been known to lead to overacting and to the ignoring of the colleagues with whom she is dancing at the time. There is with her, as ever, great charm, an eager enthusiasm, and I am happy to say, a fine sense of loyalty. This is a quality I particularly appreciate. It has been shown to me on more than one occasion. When I brought the Paris Opera Ballet for the New York City Festival, Tamara was not nor had she been at that time a member of the Paris Opera Company. She barely knew Lifar, yet it was she who became his champion in New York. It was a calculated risk to her career which she took, because she respected Lifar as an artist, did not believe the stories about him, and was interested in fair play.