Tamara Karsavina was born in Saint Petersburg, the daughter of Platon Konstantinovich Karsavin and his wife, Anna Iosifovna (née Khomyakova).

[12] Without seeking Platon's permission, Karsavina's mother arranged for her to begin taking lessons with a family friend, the retired dancer Vera Joukova.

[15] Far from receiving preferential treatment, however, Karsavina referred to her father as her "most exacting teacher... and to the tune of his fiddle I exerted myself to the utmost.

[18] It was unheard of at that time for women to begin dancing professionally before the age of eighteen, but her father had lost his teaching position at the school in 1896, leaving her family in dire straits financially.

[21] Karsavina's most famous roles were Lise in La Fille Mal Gardée, Medora in Le Corsaire, and the Tsar Maiden in The Little Humpbacked Horse.

During her years with the company, she created many of her most famous roles in the ballets of Mikhail Fokine, including Petrushka and Le Spectre de la Rose.

Karsavina left Russia in 1918, just before Red Terror was launched by the Bolsheviks at the beginning of the Russian Civil War, and moved to Paris, where she continued her association with the Ballets Russes as a leading ballerina.

"[23] In the film, A Portrait of Giselle, Karsavina recalls a "wardrobe malfunction": during a performance one of her shoulder straps fell and she accidentally exposed herself.

She occasionally assisted with the revival of the ballets in which she had danced, notably Spectre de la Rose, in which she coached Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev.

[27] In 1959, Karsavina advised Sir Frederick Ashton on his important revival of La Fille Mal Gardée for the Royal Ballet.

She taught him Petipa's original mimed dialogue for the celebrated scene "When I'm Married", as well as his choreography for the "Pas de Ruban", two passages which are still retained in Ashton's production.

In a foreword to this edition, dated 20 October 1947, Karsavina states: "I finished writing this book on August 20, 1929, the day I heard of Diaghileff's death.