Dame Alicia Markova DBE was a British ballerina and a choreographer, director and teacher of classical ballet. Most noted for her career with Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes and touring internationally, she was widely considered to be one of the greatest classical ballet dancers of the twentieth century. She was the first British dancer to become the principal dancer of a ballet company and, with Dame Margot Fonteyn, is one of only two English dancers to be recognised as a prima ballerina assoluta. Markova was a founder dancer of the Rambert Dance Company, The Royal Ballet and American Ballet Theatre, and was co-founder and director of the English National Ballet.
Alicia Markova in 1940
Portrait of Markova in the Bluebird Variation of The Sleeping Beauty, commissioned from Igor Stravinsky for the American Ballet Theatre (1941)
Markova in "The Dying Swan", 1948
Pointe shoe belonging to Markova, currently housed at The Shoe Room in Toronto.
Sergei Pavlovich Diaghilev, also known as Serge Diaghilev, was a Russian art critic, patron, ballet impresario and founder of the Ballets Russes, from which many famous dancers and choreographers would arise.
Diaghilev in 1910
Sergei Diaghilev by Valentin Serov, 1904
Sergei Diaghilev with his nanny, 1905, Léon Bakst
Diaghilev's gravestone, Isola di San Michele, Orthodox section, Venice, Italy (April 2011)