The Markova-Dolin company was no more the ultimate answer to my balletic problem than was the Original Ballet Russe. It was, however, something more than a satisfactory stop-gap; it was also a very pleasant association. Markova and Dolin are a quite remarkable pair. For years their stars were congruent. Until recently there were indications that they had become one, a fixed constellation, supreme, serene, sparkling. Those gods in whose hands lie the celestial disposition have seen fit to shift their orbits so that now each goes his or her separate course. I, for one, cannot other than express my personal regret that this is so. One complemented the other. I would go so far as to say that one benefited the other. Both as individual artists and in partnership, the distinguished pair of Britons are an ornament to their art and to their native land. _ALICIA MARKOVA_ Alicia Markova, _née_ Lilian Alicia Marks, was born in London, 1st December, 1910. Her life has been celebrated in perhaps as many volumes and articles as any other _ballerina_, if for no other reason than that the English seem to burst into print about ballet and to encase their words between solid covers more extensively than any other people I know, not excluding the French. It is almost a case of scratch an Englishman and you will find a ballet author. Because of this extensive bibliography, the details of Markova’s career need not concern me here, save to establish the highlights in a public life that has been extraordinarily successful. When Markova arrived in this country to join the Massine Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, she already had behind her a high position in British ballet; yet she was, in a sense, shy and naive. Her father had died when Alicia was thirteen. There were three other sisters, and an Irish mother, who had adopted orthodox Judaism on her marriage to Alicia’s father, all in need of support. Alicia became the head of and bread-winner for the family. The mother worked hard at the business of being a mother, but kept away from the theatre’s back-stage. The story of the family life of the mother and the four daughters sounds like a Louisa M. Alcott novel, with theatre innovations and variations. Before she became a pupil at the Chelsea studio of Seraphina Astafieva, late of the Imperial and Diaghileff Ballets, little Alicia had been a principal in a London Christmas pantomime and had already been labeled “the miniature Pavlova.” It was in this studio that her path crossed that of one Sydney Francis Patrick Chippendall Healey-Kay, soon to have his name truncated and changed to Anton Dolin by Serge Diaghileff. It was Dolin who brought Alicia Marks to Diaghileff’s attention, not, however, without some difficulty. Dolin’s conversations with Diaghileff about “the miniature Pavlova” brought only disgust from the great founder of modern ballet. The pretentiousness and presumptuousness of such a title roused only repugnance in the great man.