Don't stop the dance: Dame Alicia Markova was spotted by

afternoon in a dim mansion flat in Knightsbridge, so a touch of eccentricity is introduced by the fact that she is wearing big sunglasses. Her name is Doris and she used to be Hughie Greene's assistant on the television talent show Opportunity Knocks. As we stand on the lino of a long, colourless corridor, another figure appears from one of the rooms.

This is Doris's elder sister, Dame Alicia Markova, who is just as cheerful but in a more delicate way. She says: ''You must excuse my dress.'' She is wearing a quilted, floor-length housecoat, buttoned up to the neck. Two tiny silver slippers protrude from beneath it. There are large rings on her small, expressive hands. Her grey hair is swept back in a tidy cloud and pinned behind.

Both women look of indeterminate age and it is shocking to realise that Dame Alicia will be 90 on December 1. I am reminded of Shaw's remark who, at the age of 87, said: ''At my age you are either well or dead.''

Dame Alicia takes me into her sanctum which is full of ballet memorabilia: paintings and sketches of herself, pirouetting bronzes, a signed photograph of Diaghilev in his customary big, collared coat, piles of books and magazines, letters and diplomas, cardboard boxes with ''Markova'' scrawled on them in marking pen - it looks as though she moved in last week and hasn't had time to do any major unpacking yet. ''I thought this would be better than the big room at the end because if we have to look anything up it's

all here.''

It's Markova, with the emphasis on the first syllable, just as it's Pavlova. In Russian, as in English, the emphasis in a word is a law unto itself and has to be learnt. It should be Romanov for example. In the ballet world there is a charming snobbery about getting these Russian emphases right. And for good reason - because the whole of British ballet came out of Diaghilev. It simply didn't exist before him.

But Dame Alicia is not snobbish about this or about anything else. She has an unexpected innocence and ease, and has that girlish combination of being both spectral and down-to-earth. She, who was the first British ballerina of international renown, is also the last living dancer to have worked with Diaghilev.

''Oh, that's not quite true,'' she says with a little suck of air, ''because Dame Ninette de Valois is still here in her nursing home in Barnes with wonderful carers. But she sleeps most of the time. I'll be going to see her in a couple of days.'' Dame Ninette was born ''Edris Stannus'' in Ireland in 1898 - and Dame Alicia was born Lilian Alicia Marks in Finsbury Park in 1910.

''Diaghilev changed my name without telling me. But I didn't mind.''

Nobody was fooled of course and Diaghilev was ridiculed in the press at the time for such changes but as she explains: ''When I started no dancer could find work with a British name because they said the public wouldn't take you seriously, so we had to take Russian or French names, and the opera singers would often take Italian names.''

Although everyone knew, the continental names would cast the appropriate romance and chic over the programmes. And by making these performers quasi-mythical it would also release them from the confinements of the British class system.

Diaghilev spotted her as a 10-year-old at the class of Princess Astafieva at the Pheasantry in the King's Road, Chelsea - where he also spotted the 17-year-old Anton Dolin (whose real name was Sydney Healey-Kay, later always called ''Pat'' by his friends, another dancer of Irish origin, and Dame Alicia's mother too was Irish). But Alicia's exposure to great ballet had been a couple of years before.

''My mother idolised Anna Pavlova and when I was eight took me to see The Dumb Girl of Portici, the film in which she starred.'' Next her mother enrolled her at the Thorne Academy ''which was held at the Athenaeum Cinema, Muswell Hill, every Saturday morning. Madge Thorne did the elocution and Dorothy Thorne did the dancing part''. Soon after her father managed to gain her audience with Pavlova who lived at Ivy House, Golder's Green, when not touring the world.

''I came to know her. This belonged to her. And those. She left them to me.'' She slaps the seat of an armchair and points to a pair of upright bedroom chairs painted cream and carved with swags of flowers. But on that sunny morning 80 years ago, ''I went through exercises for her at the barre and afterwards her advice to me was 'Look after your

teeth.' Which is not as silly as it sounds. She knew that for a dancer the key to a career is good health.''

A high percentage of the women do live to a great age, ''although Pavlova died from pneumonia barely 50''.

''Is your health good?''

''What do you think?'' She smiles with satisfaction. ''The medical people are very interested in me because although I've had just about everything I've always recovered very successfully. I still do my exercises, I sleep like a log, I've always had an enormous appetite and never had to diet.''

''Did Diaghilev feed his company with a special diet?''

''They didn't feed us! We had to feed ourselves. And on little money. That's where the unions have been very good because before the unions dancers didn't earn.

''With Diaghilev I received #2.10s a week which was the corps money. I've always been a great one for eggs. If I was travelling with Guggy [her governess, Gladys Hogan] or my mother, and staying in a hotel, we couldn't afford room service or to go down to the restaurant. Guggy would buy some cold things from a shop and in those days theatre people always travelled with a hatbox among the luggage. In the hatbox there would be a weeny cooking ring and a weeny saucepan. I've still got mine somewhere in there.''

She waves in the direction of a group of boxes with a slow curl of her be-ringed hand. ''So you could boil up some eggs or hot milk, simple nourishing things. You couldn't have a big meal before a performance and the Russians always used to say have a couple of raw eggs - plop plop down - beforehand, and you'd be able to do the whole of The Sleeping Beauty or Swan Lake on two raw eggs.

''It was all so very different then. Oh my life, I haven't stopped professionally for 80 years! And I don't want anything organised for my 90th birthday. I've told them I

can't guarantee I'll be here. But this time I think it's organising itself in its own way.''

Her first professional booking was in 1920 in the pantomime Dick Whittington at the Kennington Theatre, where she was billed as the Child Pavlova and danced three spots including Salome! In the show she supplanted as principal dancer the future film star, Jessie Mathews, who was very put out, though later they became good friends.

It was from here that she was able to transfer to Princess Astafieva's famous dancing class. The princess, who had settled in London in 1916, knew Diaghilev from St Petersburg and he often dropped by for recruitment to his London seasons.

Although spotted at 10, Alicia was prevented from joining his company until 14

by a bout of diphtheria. Diaghilev's Ballet Russe was one of the great engines of the modern movement in twentieth-century culture and, barred first by the Imperial Theatre and then by the Bolsheviks, the company never performed in Russia itself. Sometimes it is written ''Ballets Russes'' but I notice that on Diaghilev's personal publicity photograph it is printed in the singular form.

It ran from 1909 to 1929 in two phases. The first, before the Great War, it was based in Paris and associated with designers Bakst and Benois, and dancers Nijinsky and Karsavina. This climaxed in 1913 with Stravinsky's Rite of Spring. The second phase is after the war, when it was based in Monte Carlo but increasingly present in London, and associated with Picasso, Matisse, Cocteau. A choreographer from Russia, 20-year-old Balanchine, had been noticed working at the Empire Theatre, Leicester Square, by Pat Dolin who alerted Diaghilev who took him on. When Balanchine began to rework Stravinsky's Le Chant du Rossignol into a 20-minute ballet they thought little Alicia would be perfect for the Nightingale.

She was asked to report to Monte Carlo on January 1, 1925, one month after her 14th birthday. The previous September her father had died from pneumonia and other members of her family came forward with extra financial support - Alicia would not have been allowed by law to work abroad without a governess. Diaghilev was sweet to her and became a father figure. She says: ''I was the only member of the company who wasn't afraid of him. I called him Serjypops.'' He wasn't sentimental and saw her subjected to the most rigorous discipline. Alicia was virtually imprisoned by her governess and, unless there were evening rehearsals, her bedtime was 6.30pm. She evokes it - and indeed everything else - in long, meandering detail, with her soft, clear, friendly voice which retains its slight north London twang. Alas, these evocations must be shrunk - I was talking to her for well over three hours.

''In those days Monte Carlo was like a wonderful village. Everyone knew everyone, including all the shopkeepers and their families. We were going to live with Bronislava Nijinska (Nijinksy's sister and a great choreographer herself) because she had a daughter who was my age. But when Diaghilev brought in Balanchine she was angry and . . . left! Where could we go? We stayed with Dame Ninette at first but her hotel was full of Casino people and Pat, who was already with the company, found us the Colony Hotel, cheaper, quieter, retired people. Later they said it's better if you go into digs, so we went up five big flights of steps which led you into Beausoleil, just over the border into France, and everything was much cheaper there. Diaghilev and Kochno (his deputy) of course always stayed at the Hotel de Paris, just as in London they always stayed at the Savoy.''

At that time Pat Dolin was Diaghilev's current boyfriend, as Nijinsky and Massine had been previously. Some years before his death Dolin told John Drummond: ''Diaghilev's sexual demands were straightforward, rather adolescent, and did not involve any form of penetrative intercourse.'' I ask Alicia if she was aware of the extra bond between Dolin and Diaghilev. ''Oh no, I was still a child and in those days homosexuality was . . .''

''Discreet.''

''It was also considered by many to be very disgraceful. Later of course I knew about it all and I must say I have always taken those things quite easily . . . Perhaps I was forward-looking in this as in so many other things. But at that time, no, the atmosphere was very committed to the work and what went on behind the scenes never intruded. Our teacher was the great Cecchetti.''

He was the greatest dancing master of the age. Born in a theatre dressing-room in Rome he had gone to St Petersburg in the later nineteenth-century as a dancer then as a teacher. He and his wife opened a school in London in 1918. ''But he was always in Monte Carlo for our winter season. We had performances for a week in January, then a period of rehearsals while the opera used the theatre, and then the main ballet season was at Easter time, April/May. Cecchetti had taught Pavlova, Nijinsky, Karsavina, all of them.

''He was Number One. But Maestro, as we called him, never took children. He worked in the Casino studio with

the principals while his wife worked with the corps de

ballet on the stage of the movie theatre about a block away.

I was put with Madame. So this thing arrives with chopped-

off hair, white socks, very naive, a little nervous and . . .''

''Excited.''

''No. I never got excited. Maybe that's why I'm still here. I would keep that for the performances. I learnt very early from these great artists that if you give it out here, there, have tantrums, make scenes, what have you got left for the performance? I was talking about this with Joan Sutherland who agrees with me that when you have great artistic responsibility and a big performance coming up, one is going into battle and so you need to laugh. I've gone off again. Another story. And you probably won't ever want to talk to me again. So - one day I am with Madame Cecchetti on this awful tilted stage and I only spoke English and they all spoke Russian and French and Italian all mixed up and Diaghilev was always enquiring after my progress, how is the little one coming along and so forth, and one day Maestro walks in while we are doing our plies to see if there was any talent. We all did

our curtseys and that was that. Later Guggy was taking me to one of the orchestral rehearsals which I adored in the theatre and Diaghilev always encouraged me to attend other rehearsals when a messenger came up to her and said: 'Don't take her to the cinema tomorrow. Maestro says she must report here for the 9 o'clock class.' Oh, he was so strict! I was the first child he ever worked with. His method - which they don't use today when everyone stands where they like - was to have his students in a semicircle so he could see everyone. But one of them would be placed in the central space alone! And with every class, the sequence would move on one so that everyone had a turn in the central space. For my very first lesson he put me in that central space. No escape!''

Le Rossignol opened in Paris in June 1925 and Markova, in a costume designed by Matisse, with Stravinsky conducting, was launched. ''Is it true that Diaghilev's favourite scent was Mitsouko by Guerlain?''

''I believe it was. I know he always smelt very nice.''

''What is your favourite scent?''

''Oh, I've been through them all. But the first perfume I was ever given was from Balanchine and Madame Danilova. We were on tour in Budapest. The bedbugs were terrible. Everyone was covered in red marks. It was my birthday, December 1, 1927. They took me for dinner and they gave me L'Aimant by Coty. Do they still have it now? It would be a very old-fashioned smell. But at that time it had just come out and was the new modern one for young people. I remember I had danced La Chatte for Balanchine that evening.''

This was a ''constructivist'' ballet with sets by Gabo and Pevsner, music by Sauguet. It was danced on shiny American cloth, very unsuitable, and two previous dancers had been injured as a result, but Alicia secretly put rubber soles on to her ballet shoes, survived, and danced it more than anyone else. In 1928 she finally saw Nijinsky. It was at the Opera in Paris. Diaghilev brought him to a performance of Petrushka hoping that a memory of former glories might stir his mind which had collapsed 10 years previously. The greatest figure in twentieth century dance had burnt out before the age of 30. On that night too there was barely a flicker from the ghost as he was led away again. Today Alicia is President of the Nijinsky Foundation in America. She remained with the company until Diaghilev's death in Venice in 1929.

An extraordinary genius attaches to the Ballets Russes and so powerful was it that almost everyone associated with it continued in outstanding careers. Since there were no British ballet companies, Diaghilev was able to have the pick of British talent and, apart from the Russians there were more British working for him than anyone else. After Diaghilev's death it was this group which went on to make London a great ballet city, culminating in the foundation of the Sadler's Wells Ballet which in due course became the Royal Ballet. Alicia, Dame Ninette, Pat Dolin and Marie Rambert (a Polish woman who had been Nijinsky's assistant) are the key figures, but also Ursula Moreton and Lydia Sokolova (born Hilda Munnings). Alicia was undoubtedly the chief attraction at that time. Further lustre was added to the scene by two Russians who came to live in London as Pavlova had before: Tamara Karsavina

who married an English diplomat and Lydia Lopokova (Lopokova) who married the economist Maynard Keynes. The ''Diaghilev'' part in this development was taken by Lilian Baylis. And the Princess Astafieva?

''In, I think, 1933, I called on her at the Pheasantry on my way to the Wells for rehearsal. She was very ill with cancer and said: ''But you can't leave now - my assistant has gone to the West End and there is no one to take the little Shanghai lesson.'' This was a girl called Peggy Hookham, a private pupil who had been brought up in Shanghai where her father was with one of the tobacco companies. What could I do? I didn't want Madame to think I thought myself too famous to help her so one of the boys went out and cancelled my rehearsal by telephone and little Peggy Hookham became my very first student. I think I gave her several more lessons after that one.

''She became better known as Margot Fonteyn. Madame died soon after and when the developers wanted to demolish the Pheasantry in the 1970s - as you know it had turned into a famous nightclub - the conservationists came to Pat and myself for help and we managed to have a blue plaque put up to Madame Astafieva which helped to save the building.''

Alicia and Dolin went to America on the outbreak of the Second World War and, as is also the case with Auden and Isherwood, no matter how you play around with the rationale, it doesn't feel quite right. She was indeed under contract to work at the Met for three years but war allows one to break contracts. And in fact the image of her and Dolin dancing all over North and South America during six of Europe's darkest years is weird. Once safely in the New World it wasn't easy to return via war-riven seas and skies. She tells me that she has been criticised frequently for this but cites the necessity of having to earn her living. There was no ballet in London and she was at the height of her powers. And there is no doubt that she has brought more joy to humanity by continuing to dance through that period than by working in a factory. But one can sense that she is not quite happy about it either.

And by the time she came back the Fonteyn star was in the ascendant.

During the 1950s, she worked on both sides of the Atlantic and her farewell performance which she did not announce because she hadn't consciously decided - was at an anniversary at the Royal Festival Hall in 1962. ''I didn't want to do the Dying Swan again so I gave them L'Apres-midi d'un faune but I didn't dance it on pointe.'' Subsequently she has taught in London, Paris and New York. All the laurels came her way, including that of British prima ballerina assoluta.

She observes, of course, the traditional courtesy of the theatre world - everyone was so marvellous and so helpful - without being at all gushing, but she has occasionally broken ranks to reveal the complexity of her deeper feelings. One occasion was four years ago when she told a journalist that her normal development had been thwarted by two homosexual men, Diaghilev and Dolin. Markova was very annoyed by the way this was duly written up - that it implied she regretted her life and wished it had been different. She doesn't wish that and was aware early on of the price to be paid for achievement. But it was certainly true that the combined regime of Diaghilev and Gladys Hogan deprived her of the company of teenagers during adolescence. Later her partnership with Dolin - they had their own company in the 1930s - was also an emotional as well as professional distraction from affairs with other

men.

''What was your relationship with Dolin?''

''We were wonderful friends. I grew up with him. He could be tough but he had to support his mother and his sick brother's family. He asked me twice to marry him.''

''But he was homosexual.''

''I knew that. How would it have worked? And so I refused.''

Dolin could indeed be difficult. He once asked me to write his biography but I knew I'd not be allowed anything like a free hand and so declined. When Markova was the subject of This Is Your Life Dolin refused to participate out of jealousy (the programme had never subjected him). And when I ask her if she thought Dolin had been fair to her in his autobiography she replies: ''I thought it was rather anti-me. It wasn't quite the person I'd worked with closely for 60 years.'' But she doesn't want to stir any of that now. She knows there is room enough for all of them.

''Why didn't you marry anyone else?''

She gives a shrug, a tilt of the head, but her eyes remain serious. ''So many reasons. How to tell you? Dolin and I were the first dancers to fly everywhere. We'd done it since 1931 - Imperial Airways, Croydon to Paris . . . We'd been doing three shows a day in the new movie theatre in Leicester Square. We finished Saturday evening and were due to open in Madrid on Monday. Pat said that if we flew to Paris Sunday morning and caught the overnight train, we could be in Madrid Monday morning, which we did, and danced that night. Can you imagine? Murder. But that's how it was. Complete dedication, Diaghilev taught us that. And when you have that sort of life there's not much opportunity to develop any other. In fact I fell in love very easily - but I was always withdrawn and I didn't blossom as a person until after I retired from the stage.''

This doubtless contributed to her characteristic stage persona which had an aura of mystery about it, as of a strange, beautiful creature, kept in captivity and released only on to the stage. Critics referred to her ''fragile poetry'' and ''ethereal stage presence''. Marie Rambert was fond of remembering Alicia tucking into steak and kidney pudding.

Consequently she has lived with sister Doris more than with anyone else in this flat with its special air, as though the clock stopped in 1950 after they moved in. But the atmosphere is not broody or bogged down. Their habitation seems temporary, the trunks packed in readiness for some new trip.

''The flat belonged to Constance Cummings's father-in-law. And he was American which is why it has two bathrooms. It came up for rent in 1949 and we took it because it had been decorated and we didn't have to do a thing.'' It hasn't been redecorated since. And they still rent it. But from whom?

''I don't know. Doris knows that sort of thing.''

Alicia has always been a family person, the eldest of four sisters. Bunny followed her into the Sadler's Wells Ballet. She died from leukaemia 10 years ago. ''Doris was a soubrette at the Windmill Theatre. She wasn't for the ballet, she was more commercial, more glamour and not for the arts.'' The fourth sister, Vivienne married the ballet writer Arnold Haskell ''who put ballet on the map by inventing the word 'balletomane'.''

My final question is about Diaghilev's death.

''He didn't look too well that last week at Covent Carden. He had diabetes but didn't keep to diets and loved rich food and high living. As we all did! If people enjoyed an artist, one always hoped they'd invite you to dinner. Because we didn't have any houses. We were gypsies. I've been a gypsy all my life. Even this flat isn't -''

''But how did you learn of Diaghilev's death?''

''I was staying with the Crewleys in Littlehampton for the summer holiday. They were old friends of our family and had a very nice boarding house in Adolphus Road which my mother moved into after I was born. It was never an easy life. We've always struggled to make it better. My father was a mining engineer who started poor and then did quite well and lost it all again but I've never been ashamed of being poor. My mother was one of seven sisters which in those days was a common thing. Our thing was we wanted a brother, we kept saying please, and when it was going to happen it was the First World War and she lost him. My parents were always travelling - 23 Wilberforce Road - two furnished rooms - that's where they lived at the time I came along and they thought they were going to lose me too because I came the wrong way round. I only know this by overhearing someone but apparently the doctor

turned to my father and said: 'Which do you want me to save? Your wife or your child?' What a question. But naturally - they so loved each other and Daddy's mother had died in his childbirth - and so he said: 'My wife.' But I'm still here! Nobody else knows that - I don't know why I've told you - not even my sisters know that . . .''