Postscript

Markova was on her toes in the snow …
but never again in ballet

As a great actress grows old, she changes her roles. Instead of Juliet, she plays Hedda Gabler.

But for the prima ballerina there is no valid release. She must dance Giselle, then when she has doubts she must bow herself off the stage.

Last year was not a good year for Markova. Her tonsil operation in the spring was more serious than was thought at the time. She had to cancel her season at the Metropolitan Opera House. She has passed her 52nd birthday.

And now, nonchalantly, as she gets on to a plane for New York, where she has done perhaps more than anyone to foster interest in ballet, she announces her retirement from active dancing.

Those near to her were surprised at the timing of the announcement, but not surprised at the way she did it. Yesterday’s casual statement in an airport lounge made it easy for this shy little woman to avoid the many questions she didn’t want to answer.

—London Daily Mail, 1/2/63

That the news came as a complete surprise to sisters Doris, Vivienne, and Bunny was one thing. But it also surprised Markova herself. Sure, she had thought of retiring in recent years, especially during several prolonged illnesses. But she had always come back.

Suddenly—there at the cold, snowy airport on New Year’s Day—the time just seemed right.

She wasn’t one to do the grand farewell tour and milk it for all it was worth. She didn’t even want to dance just “one” final performance. Better that everyone should remember her at her peak.

Needless to say, the announcement made headlines on both sides of the Atlantic. The news was greeted with admiration, fond memories, and sadness.

Dancing no more—the infinitely graceful Markova

It is hard to become a great dancer. It is harder still to stop. But Alicia Markova, who became a dancing legend in her own lifetime, made the decision yesterday… .

She is 52, has been dancing for 42 years… .

Markova was always a pioneer. She helped found all the major British dance companies—Ballet Rambert, the Sadler’s Wells Ballet, and Festival Ballet—and the American Ballet Theatre.

Markova, indeed, set standards by which other dancers are judged.

She opened windows of delight for millions. It is hard to accept that we shall never see her dance again.

—Daily Express, 1/2/63

Just a few days after Markova arrived in New York, the phone rang. It was Rudolph Bing, the general manager of the Metropolitan Opera Company. “Come and visit with all your friends at the Met,” he cheerily suggested. The invitation was to attend a full dress rehearsal of La Sonnambula starring Markova’s close chum Joan Sutherland. No press. No crowds. Just friends. How could she say no?

Bing had an ulterior motive. He wanted to ask Markova a teensy favor. Before retiring for the rest of her life, how about staging two ballets for the Metropolitan Opera Ballet School? Her old pal Antony Tudor was the school’s director. Markova didn’t hesitate to say yes.

She was an extraordinary producer and teacher.

“I don’t believe you have to raise your voice and yell to make people do things,” Markova explained in an interview. “If people yelled at me it would paralyse me and I would not be able to do anything at all. It’s best to be straightforward and simple. Treat people like human beings. You need to have respect for people.”

The young dancers at the Met adored Markova, so much so that they petitioned Rudolf Bing to hire her full-time.

And that’s what he did.

In March 1963 it was announced to the press that Alicia Markova would become the new Director of the Metropolitan Opera Ballet. Her “retirement” barely lasted a month.

The London papers were full of effusive praise, both for Markova’s pioneering career in British ballet, and her decision to pass on her great knowledge of dance to others.

Ballet is such an ephemeral art. It requires one-on-one training from masters and choreographers to flourish. Markova, with her uncanny memory for steps, and her legendary creative partnerships with Balanchine, Fokine, Ashton, Massine, Nijinska, and Tudor, was like a walking (and dancing) encyclopedia of early 20th-century ballet.

“It’s marvelous to be a dancer,” Markova announced joyfully to an impressionable audience of London Royal Ballet School students in 1972. “To think the command you have over your hands, your feet, anything, just that alone—to be able to give pleasure to people. I think that’s very important… .

“Try to enjoy it. You’ll have problems. But think what a heritage you have.”

A Tribute to Markova, C.B.E.

Miss Markova, who made her United States debut at the Metropolitan Opera House in 1938 as Giselle, the role which she set a standard for our age, has been directly associated with the Metropolitan Opera Company in recent years as prima ballerina in Die Fledermaus and Orfeo ed Euridice, but now, for the first time, will be completely responsible for the Ballet Company as a whole.

In accepting her new responsibility, Miss Markova is now fulfilling the second of the two goals of a great dancer: first to dance, and then to pass on the heritage of her art to succeeding generations.

The renowned ballerina, who began her career when still a child as the youngest ballerina of the famed Diaghilev Ballet, is justly proud of her history of “firsts” in the ballet world. She has started more ballet companies than any other ballerina, was the first ballerina televised, the first prima ballerina of the Old Vic-Sadler’s Wells Ballet (today The Royal Ballet), the first English prima ballerina ever, and the first English dancer to star in a full evening ballet.

—New Daily, London, 1963

That was one of dozens of similar articles. Several must have made their way to Buckingham Palace, as Markova again made all the London newspapers in June.

Markova Honoured

Alicia Markova’s great work for the ballet and her rare distinction as a dancer have at last been officially recognized. In the Queen’s Birthday Honours last Saturday she was awarded a D.B.E. When she has received the honour from the hands of the Queen we shall be able to address her as Dame Alicia. And about time, too!

—Stage & Television Today, London, 6/13/63

Clive Barnes

Great satisfaction is felt in London dance circles by the announcement in the Queen’s Birthday Honors that Alicia Markova, the 1st British ballerina, had at last been suitably recognized by the State and promoted to the rank of Dame of the British Empire. The fact that it was over-due made it no less welcome.

—The London Spectator, July 1963

Clearly, many thought the award too long in coming, and Markova herself never got over it.

Almost thirty years later, British journalist Louette Harding interviewed her on the occasion of her ninety-second birthday. Harding once again brought up the topic of Markova’s having had to wait so long for the official honor. The public slight still seemed fresh.

… She [Markova] had been made to wait while her one-time protégé at the Vic-Wells ballet, Margot Fonteyn, and her old friend, Dame Ninette de Valois, had been honoured years previously. She says that the British ballet world regarded her as an interloper, perhaps because she spent so much time working abroad—or perhaps she discerned covert anti-Semitism. She made a great point of stressing her Britishness to me, which suggests she still bears scars.

She was once accused of bailing out of Britain at the outbreak of the war to dance in the safety of America; in fact, she had a contract with the Ballet Russes in New York.

—Daily Mail, London, 12/1/2002

After the Queen’s Birthday Honours list was made public, the Manchester Evening News sent a photographer to Markova’s London home. He snapped the smartly dressed ballerina with her head looking heavenward, a beatific smile across her face, and a letterbox full of congratulatory telegrams clasped to her breast. She was now and forever more Dame Alicia Markova. It meant the world to her.

Markova’s position at the Metropolitan Opera wasn’t scheduled to begin until August, as she had previously committed to many speaking engagements across the United States. She explained to a reporter, “Not long ago I had an audience of ten thousand students at Brigham Young University in Utah. At other times, my audiences are club women. Yes, I like them too, for I know I’m talking to parents, many of whom may be apprehensive about letting their children become involved with ballet. I try to be a reassuring influence.”

She would continue public speaking to groups large and small for the rest of her life. Her lectures were sellouts wherever she went.

When Markova returned to New York to begin her new full-time job in August, she was staying once again at the Windsor Hotel apartments. In all of her worldwide travels, the frail ballerina had never experienced the terror that awaited her in the early evening of August 14.

Markova Tied Up, Robbed of Jewels
by Nora Ephron

Alicia Markova, one of ballet’s all-time greats, was robbed and manhandled in her hotel apartment by a pair of gun-wielding thugs who tied her up and escaped with more than $4,000 in jewelry and $70 in cash, police revealed today.

The retired prima ballerina told police two men surprised her as she was entering her 15th floor suite at the Hotel Manger Windsor, 100 W. 58th St., at about 5:30 p.m. yesterday.

Near hysteria, she related that one of the burglars thrust a pistol in her back and commanded: “You better tell us where everything is and you won’t get hurt.”

One gunman kept her covered while his accomplice bound her hands and feet with venetian blind cord.

Miss Markova, 53, directed the bandits to a bedroom drawer containing $70 in cash. They then tore away a bracelet, ring and necklace she was wearing, and threw her on the bed.

The bandits systematically ransacked the two-room suite and fled.

—New York Post, 8/15/63

What that story didn’t reveal was that while one robber held a gun to Markova’s head, the other had a knife pointed at her stomach. The cord was tied so tight, it cut off her circulation and she passed out. When she awoke, the robbers—who had worn handkerchiefs to cover their faces—were gone, and she was able to knock the phone off the bedside table and alert the operator she needed help.

Markova suffered severe bruising around her wrists and ankles where she had been bound, but was grateful to be alive, as she told the press the next day:

… Looking regal in a brown dress with gold-leaf trim, Miss Markova told reporters of her five-minute ordeal today.

“It’s been awful,” she said. “Thank God, physically, I’m all right.”

Miss Markova, who has been under sedation since the robbery, apologized to reporters for being “quite unadorned, because, you see, I have no jewelry.”

—New York Post, 8/15/63

Though it was an inauspicious beginning to her new career, Markova enjoyed the new opportunity to “pioneer” ballet at the Met, as she explained to a London newspaper:

My New Career at 53—by Markova

Alicia Markova looks good at 53. Life in the executive Suite suits her. The former Alice Marks from Finsbury Park was in London this week on her way back to New York where she is now Director of Ballet at the Metropolitan Opera.

We sat in the park and talked about teaching Birgit Nilsson the Dance of the Seven Veils.

Turning a great Wagnerian soprano into a seductive dancer for Salome is just one of the jobs Dame Alicia now tackles at the Met.

Gone are the days of Giselle. Instead she works with Sutherland on her performance in Lucia or trains her company for large-scale ballet scenes for operas like Samson or Manon.

After 26 years through the Stage Door, she now goes in through the Executive’s entrance. Her colleagues are Messrs Bing, Bernstein and Schippers and her collaborators are opera producers like Franco Zeffirelli, Gunther Rennert and Margherita Wallmann.

Almost immediately after she announced her retirement from dancing—“not even time for a come-back farewell tour!”—the Met snapped her up. She has a great chance there now to lay the foundations for an American national ballet company.

“It’s the second time around for me,” she said.

Markova was ideally suited for her new position, not only a master in ballet but an expert in music as well. She and Joan Sutherland had become friends in London when the coloratura soprano was first performing at the Royal Opera House. Sutherland was in awe of Markova, as she later explained in an interview:

When I first went to London in 1951, it was one of my first great experiences to see Dame Alicia dance Giselle. And for me she became Giselle. She was Giselle. And it was the beginning of a wonderful association with this almost unreal creature, for me. Alicia was Giselle and every other character that she undertook to portray on the stage. I couldn’t see enough performances of hers and for me personally, she was a great inspiration, because I felt very awkward in my younger days and I was able to watch her and gain some knowledge of the intensity with which one has to perform to come across to an audience.

In addition to getting on well with the most famous male and female opera singers of the day (typically not an easy task), Markova inspired the ballet dancers by giving them their own spotlight as a performing solo company outside of the opera.

“Opera ballet is a real challenge,” she explained. “You often haven’t had the best dancers. Who wants to be just an appendage to something else? Now, with the additional chance to perform on their own right, the company’s morale is high.”

Markova’s “retirement” hadn’t worked out as planned. Though the job was far less physically demanding than in her dancing days, the hours were far longer. The ex-ballerina remained calm and unflustered. Unlike her early British cohorts Marie Rambert and Ninette de Valois, Markova was known for her warmth, encouragement, and lack of temperament.

“I had everything … now I want to help other young dancers” Speaking, dame alicia markova

… She told me: “I have had my career. Anything I am doing now is a bonus.” …

Her tranquility, the result of the long years of a dancer’s discipline, is almost unnerving.

She said: “Now, two years after what I believed to be my retirement day, I am working 16 or 18 hours a day. “If one is doing creative work, creating a company, which is what I have begun to do, one does not work to a schedule.

“Last season, the Met mounted 19 operas. Since I am in charge of the ballet it means that I must know the scores of all those operas.

“Often I am up until two o’clock in the morning studying the music.”… ”I am firm when it is required,” she said. “My company know that when I ask for something I mean it.”

“But I always explain exactly what I want and always give my dancers the utmost respect.

“I think they know that I am considerate and try to protect them.”

—London newspaper, Margaret Horrigan, 1965

Markova conducted many interviews in her office at the Met—the first three years in the original location at 1411 Broadway—the rest at the Opera House’s new home in Lincoln Center Plaza, where it remains today. Every reporter commented on her grace, composure, and looking fifteen years younger than her age, “even at ten paces!”

The tasteful office décor always made a lasting impression—equaling the understated elegance of its occupant—as did the two framed accent pieces: one a photograph of Diaghilev, the other Markova’s certificate naming her a Dame of the British Empire. They were bookends to her career.

Markova was quite content in her new role. A reporter from Women’s Wear Daily asked if there was one thing she wished were different about her life. She thought for a moment and then answered,

“One wish? I wish my day could start later—I am at my peak at night—I hate to get up.”

Markova was a true New Yorker. She even did the choreography for the Opera Ballet’s performance on a float in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade. She loved it all.

But there were difficult times as well. Markova would suffer two very serious accidents at the Met, the first when her heel got caught in a metal grate. As she was falling, what popped into her head? If she broke her nose, Hurok, Ashton, and Dolin would finally get their wish—she would have to have her nose fixed. Still defiant, she swiftly turned her face to the side and fractured her cheekbone instead, along with several ribs. Her recuperation was lengthy.

Markova fell again two years later when her knee buckled under, just as it had when she was a child. Perhaps now that she was no longer dancing, the muscles and ligaments gave way. It would require more surgery.

In 1969, the Metropolitan Opera was involved in a protracted strike/lockout that lasted nine months. While Markova had been stimulated by the work, management never gave her their full support in making the ballet a viable separate performing company. She asked to be let out of her contract during the strike, and terminated her directorship.

But once again, her retirement didn’t last long. Markova would spend the rest of her life teaching, producing, and assisting in the management of various ballet companies and schools—as always, both large and small.

British ballet critic Eric Johns had been a firsthand witness to Markova’s coaching of young dancers over the years, and praised her willingness to pass on her vast knowledge, rather than spend her later years sunning herself on the Riviera.

Markova’s New Career
by Eric Johns

Great ballet performances in the classics are handed down from one generation to the next… .

Now it is Markova’s turn to be a link in the chain and hand on her priceless knowledge and interpretation to younger dancers, so that Giselle continues to remain immortal upon the international stage… .

Markova’s approach to ballet is essentially logical. When she has directed productions in the past she has always impressed upon dancers never to take a step or move an arm unless they know why they are doing so. She is likely to call out suddenly to any dancer in class. Why are you doing that? And she expects a sensible answer! It is amazing how much more interesting a ballet looks from the front when the dancers know exactly what they are doing and why they are doing it.

Markova is the most approachable person. No one in class need be nervous about asking questions, to which they will receive practical and authoritative replies. Her retirement heralds the beginning of a new career in the life of one of the beloved dancers of all time.

—Theatre World, 1963

After Markova left the Met, she gave a speech at the University of Cincinnati and spent some time with the local Civic Ballet Company. When asked, she consented to an appointment as Distinguished Lecturer on Ballet at the University’s College-Conservatory of Music. Why would the legendary ballerina move to Cincinnati? As dance critic Walter Terry explained, it was “where David McLain heads one of the most vital dance departments to be found on the university scene.” Markova was a phenomenal instructor, and was quickly promoted to a full professorship.

And she didn’t limit her teaching to ballet students. Markova also worked wonders with the University of Cincinnati basketball team. If there was anyone who knew how to jump and soar, it was Alicia Markova. As noted American choreographer Merce Cunningham said of her, she gave “the illusion of moving without a preparation—as if she had no weight to get off the ground.” She appeared “on top of her jump, like an animal,” he added.

Markova taught the ball players how to invisibly redistribute their weight in preparation for a jump to conceal their intended moves. She thought their height a great advantage that she never had.

The University signed another famous professor while Markova was there—the astronaut Neil Armstrong. Upon meeting the ex-ballerina he confessed to her, “My little dance on the moon wasn’t so good.”

After three years, Markova was offered tenure at the University. That was probably a mistake on their part. Any career permanence was anathema to the ballerina.

“I was there with a full professorship for three years to help them set up their new ballet department in a beautiful new building and form their own ballet company,” she explained upon her return to London. “Last year, when I thought the department and the company was running perfectly, I felt my work was done.”

Though Markova had always said she would consider marriage after retirement, she never truly retired. “She remained married to her art,” suggested a London newspaper, “her phenomenal memory making her an illuminating coach, her personal history offering a reservoir of important souvenirs.”

But the woman who so adored children found it a joy to always be among young dancers, helping them find their way.

“I find it very exciting if one can find young talent and help them to achieve. Because otherwise, I’ve always felt it’s very stupid for someone like myself who spent a whole lifetime trying to perfect something to suddenly perhaps disappear and it would all disappear with one.

“It was an understood fact that everything had to be passed on. In the training I received, and again I was very lucky, I had the finest Italian training with Cecchetti, I had the finest Russian training with Astafieva and Legat, and many other great teachers. It went without any question that this would be passed along. You would hold onto it as long as you could and then find somebody else to pass it on to.

“There isn’t anything in my mind to touch the human element of passing from one human being to another, the expression, the interpretation, the real—if one could say flesh—of a role.

“It’s a matter of listening to the music. The most important thing when I’m teaching or coaching, you have to see that the tradition is still kept, but it has to be kept alive and vital, so you have to find a way to bring it in line with the way the young think today.

“While teaching a young ballet dancer the Sugar Plum Fairy, ‘When you’re dancing this, this is your kingdom. This is your whole domain. You own all of this. It has to have a freedom, a happy freedom, because of all the children. That’s why you are the Sugar Plum fairy every child sort of idolizes.’

“I would try to pass on and convey the feelings of the Sugar Plum Fairy and it will be up to our young dancers and ballerinas, for them. I can’t dance it for them, they have to find their way of keeping it alive and passing it on.”

Markova never stopped traveling. Throughout the ensuing decades, many reporters interviewed the ballerina when she was back in London in her Knightsbridge flat—the one she had rented in 1949 and still shared with Doris. They invariably commented on its looking more like “temporary” living quarters than a true home. There were always trunks about, either being packed or unpacked, and piles of ballet books, files, and papers everywhere—including stacked high on the delicate white chairs she had inherited from Anna Pavlova.

Markova was continually intrigued by new experiences. She flew halfway around the world to work with her old friend Robert Helpmann, the co-director of the Australian Ballet Company. She went to Buffalo, New York to train the Niagara Frontier Ballet for their upcoming European tour with guest artist Rudolf Nureyev. And she returned to coach the Royal Winnipeg Ballet in Canada.

In London, Markova became president of the English National Ballet, a company she co-founded as The Festival Ballet back in 1951. And she was appointed governor of The Royal School of Ballet. Those were not ceremonial titles. Markova actively worked at both right up until the time of her passing.

Perhaps the most touching thing in Markova’s archives are the boxes and boxes of letters from everyday people who felt their lives transformed by her dancing. The following is typical. It is an unsigned fan letter sent to Markova when she finally returned to perform in London in 1948—after having been away in America for nine long years.

Dear Markova,

I am going to try to convey to you what your visit to London has meant to at least a handful of your admirers of some years standing, so that when this Season is over you will not be sorry that you came and that you will not stay away too long before you dance for us again.

First of all I have to go back quite a while when we saw you with Diaghileff and have followed you around, finance permitting, to The Wells, Hammersmith, Wimbledon, Streatham, Bournemouth and Brighton, etc. We none of us had very much money but we loved Ballet and worshipped you as the perfect interpretation of all it stood for, for us.

Then came the War with all its horrors and separated our small clique, when we did manage to meet occasionally it was to talk of the end of the War and return to our Darling which with all due respect, was how we referred to you. I hope this does not sound like the hysterical ravings of a silly young girl. Believe me we are none of us very young but we are very sincere in our admiration of you.

When we heard that you were coming back to London we were very happy and excited and wondered what the new and younger generation would think of you, poor things they had never really had any sort of standards to judge by.

At long last came the 7th, The Day, for which we had waited so long. There we sat, six of us together and others dotted about the House, all clutching our handkerchiefs, believe me there was not a dry eye amongst us before the evening was over. To have gone through all we had for nine long years and to have lived through it all, then to have it all slip away as soon as you set foot on the Stage. No wonder we were overcome. I have no doubt you know your own value but I think it is nice to be told how good one is. We thought you were the perfect Dancer before you went away but if such a thing is possible, you have added perfection to perfection and it is positively breathtaking to watch you.

I’m sorry I have gone into so much detail, I am not used to writing this sort of letter but how else would you know what your public think, although I do not think you could have doubted our feelings after your reception of Monday evening. We just can’t bear the thought that you are here for so short a time and beg you to come back to us soon. The American public cannot love you more than we do and we have remained faithful, so do please come back again very soon.

There is no need to wish you a successful season, that seems assured but we do wish you lots and lots of good luck.

Dame Alicia Markova passed away on December 2, 2004, one day after her ninety-fourth birthday. A few years earlier she was in a taxicab with friends when they drove past Westminster Abbey. She joked that she would never get a Royal send-off in Britain’s famed cathedral because she was Jewish. She was wrong.

Alicia Markova got her wished-for Westminster memorial service on March 8, 2005. As had been true throughout her career, it was standing room only.

The pioneer of ballet also achieved another of her many “firsts” when the Abbey allowed dancing at a service. The English National Ballet performed tribute scenes from Giselle and Les Sylphides.

Dancer Freddie Franklin attended the ceremony. He told biographer Leslie Norton he “had mixed emotions. While saddened, he was gratified to see Alicia so richly honored by the British people. He found it ‘a wonderful thing, really.’”

Yes, it was.