If ever there were an image you would be least likely to associate with Dame Alicia Markova, Britain’s first Jewish prima ballerina, it is that of a football fan.
Yet, according to Dr Susan Skedd, English Heritage’s historian, one of Markova’s earliest memories was being carried on her father’s shoulders when she was around two years old, shouting at an Arsenal match: “Buck up, the Reds!”
Cheering on the Gunners stayed with Markova all her long life, and she remained, as Skedd points out, “a north London girl, through and through”. On June 10, English Heritage celebrated this daughter of north London, who became one of the world’s greatest ballet stars, by putting up a Blue Plaque on the outside of her childhood home at 7 Cascade Avenue, Muswell Hill.
But it could all have been so different if it had not been for a consultant in Harley Street, who agreed to examine little Lily Marks, as she then was, after she had been diagnosed with “flat feet, knock knees and weak legs”.
The consultant was a ballet fan and he persuaded Lily’s mother, Eileen, to send her daughter to ballet classes to strengthen her legs. Mrs Marks thought it was a good idea, though she cannot have imagined how good.
Lily, who had been born in Finsbury Park in 1910, began attending dance classes at a local school in Muswell Hill, run by a woman called Dorothy Thorne. The eldest of four sisters – one of whom, Doris, became her agent and manager in later life – she and Doris, Vivienne and Berenice – would put on performances in the back garden of Cascade Avenue, on a stage built by their father.
Aged just eight, Susan Skedd reports, “she won a talent competition at the Atheneum Cinema in Muswell Hill”, which eventually led to her making her first professional appearance in 1920, when she was still only 10, at the Strand Theatre. She did so well that her parents decided to upgrade her level of teaching, and took her to Chelsea ballet classes with the legendary Princess Serafina Astafieva, a former star with the Ballets Russes company of Sergei Diaghilev.
And it was this connection which brought Lilian Alicia Marks to the attention of Diaghilev, who visited Astafieva’s studio one day and signed the teenager up to join the Ballet Russes in Monte Carlo.
Alicia Markova
She was just 14 and the first thing that Diaghilev did was to change her name to a ‘Russified’ version, in keeping with the slightly nonsensical tradition that all ballerinas had to be Russian. Markova was a bit disappointed; she recalled later that she had longed to be a more mystical ‘Olga’, but Alicia she remained.
In Monte Carlo she was thrust into a glamorous world of arts and culture: people such as the painters Picasso and Matisse, and primarily the legendary choreographer George Balanchine, who devised many dance steps for the diminutive ballerina that were taken from more athletic movements made by male dancers.
How was Markova’s Jewish identity expressed? According to the Jewish Women’s Archive, one influence was Lily’s Orthodox paternal great-grandfather, Abraham Marks, with whom the family lived briefly when Markova was very young. Abraham, a theatrical costume supplier, fostered young Markova’s theatricality. The sisters would play in his storeroom, making doll clothes and costumes for productions, which Alicia often originated and directed, and which they performed for family and friends.
Arthur Marks was quite well-to-do – he was a mining engineer, as was his father, and even in 1914, when the family is thought to have moved to Muswell Hill, houses in the area were fetching quite a price. Arthur, who had mining interests in Ireland, also produced reinforced rubber for army vehicles in the First World War. He may have met his wife Eileen in Ireland; reports say that she converted to Judaism for Arthur, but it is not known what level of Jewish practice was carried out in Muswell Hill.
Nevertheless, Markova, in her memoirs, said she had encountered antisemitism throughout her life, being refused permission to dance in certain productions. The dancer Lydia Lopokova, who had married the economist and philosopher John Maynard Keynes, made no secret of her dislike of the Jewish “baby ballerina”.
But Markova dug her heels in — quite literally. One of her biographers, Tina Sutton, in her admired book The Making of Markova, notes that in the dancer’s archive she had not only saved the family’s yearly High Holy tickets for their local synagogue, but also Arthur Marks’ tallit. She also, says Susan Skedd, resisted any suggestions that she should undergo plastic surgery “in order to look less Jewish”, though other dancers such as Margot Fonteyn did go under the knife.
The house in Muswell Hill where Alicia Markova grew up
Markova never forgot her Jewish heritage, and performed in benefits in New York to fund the Mann Auditorium in Tel Aviv. In 1958, she toured Israel with Festival Ballet.
Two central events in Markova’s early life propelled her career. The first was the death of her beloved father in 1924, placing a heavy burden on her to become the financial support of her mother and sisters; the second was the death of her mentor, Diaghilev, in 1929.
After numerous twists and turns, Markova proved to be an astute businesswoman, leading tours all over the United States, from big cities to tiny pockets of settlement, where the inhabitants had never heard of classical dance.
She became the supreme interpreter of the glorious Russian ballet teaching tradition, putting on astonishing “light as air”, yet profoundly athletic, performances and making star roles in ballets such as Giselle her own. She was instrumental in establishing British ballet as we know it today, not least as a co-founder of the Festival Ballet in 1950, now the English National Ballet. She was deeply committed to popularising ballet, famously stating: “Ballet used to be a very closed world… I felt it should be expanded. Why shouldn’t everybody be able to see and appreciate it?”
That remained Dame Alicia Markova’s mission throughout her long life. She died in 2004; Blue Plaques are only put up by English Heritage after a person has been dead for 20 years, allowing the plaque assessment panel to judge on the subject’s contribution — and the building where the plaque is placed has to have a seminal connection with the person being celebrated. English Heritage says the plaque “celebrates people from all walks of life who have made a significant contribution to human welfare or happiness, and/or have made an exceptional impact in their field, community or wider society”.
