Anton Dolin

Anton Dolin was a famous dancer in his time: when Diaghilev was at large in Paris producing such new works as "The Rite of Spring" and "Punchinella". In the fifties Dolin brought a troupe to Cardiff to perform a few ballets one of which was Rimsky-Korsakov's "Scheherazade". I myself appeared in this.
No, not as a dancer but as an extra. A notice went up on the walls of the common room in the university asking for extras for the ballet company called "The London Festival Ballet". A few of us applied and were accepted; we appeared as soldiers in the Rimsky-Korsakov work. We didn't have to dance but to rush on as soldiers of the Shah and cut to pieces his wives who had, in his absence, been cavorting with the male prisoners having let them out of their cells. We painted our faces with long moustaches and gave our eyes fiercesome looks and charged on at the appropriate time.
We were paid two and sixpence per night.
One of our crowd was a rather good looking young man who took the eye of Anton Dolin, now not a dancer himself but director of this London Festival Company. "I have a sore knee," he said to our young soldier, "would you be so good as to come to my dressing room to massage it for me?"
I'm pretty sure he didn't go.
I have just read in "The Rest is Noise" by Alex Ross that Diaghilev was taken with the then "beautiful" young Anton Dolin who was a dancer in his company.
He wasn't very beautiful in the 1950's.