In 1988, Francis Mason and I had lunch with Alicia Markova at the Lombardy hotel in Manhattan. Dame Alicia was seventy-seven, which seemed ancient to me at the time. But now that seems almost young given that her career seemed to have spanned centuries. She had been a leading dancer almost from the moment she joined Diaghilev in 1924, having just turned fourteen.
I felt I needed to stick up for the much-maligned (by Balanchine and others) Alice Nikitina. Yes, she had been Lord Rothemere’s mistress and thrown his weight around in the company, but certainly her legs and feet were beautiful in photos.
Dame Alicia agreed, but said that Nikitina had weak ankles and was always getting injured.
Tamara Geva often complained that Diaghilev had never liked her all that much and seemed to represent his dislike as a personal aversion. Markova suggested, however, that it was because Geva had broad shoulders and that wasn’t Diaghilev’s ideal of ballerina physique.
Geva was only three years older than Markova, but a married-to-Balanchine woman, and always nice to and rather protective of her younger colleague. Markova remembered Geva coming to her dressing room at the end of their 1927 season at the Prince’s theater in London and saying goodbye–she was leaving Diaghilev and going to America.