Kent. Maria Tallchief (1925-2013) studied with Nijinska, "all through my high school years". Everyone, recalled Tallchief, was in awe of her. "She jumped and flashed around the studio. I was under her spell." Despite "luminous green eyes" she dressed very plainly. Her husband translated. "Madame say when you sleep, sleep like a ballerina. Even on street waiting for bus, stand like a ballerina." Yet "Madame Nijinska rarely spoke. She didn't have to. She had incredible personal magnetism". From her "I first learned that the dancer's soul is in the middle of the body". When Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo came to perform in Los Angeles, the ballet dancers came to Madame to take lessons. "And the biggest star of all, Alexandra Danilova, gave Nijinska roses when she entered the studio". Allegra Kent (born 1937) recalls starting ballet lessons in 1949 when she was twelve. Madame Nijinska was a "nice-looking woman in black lounge pajamas with a long cigarette holder". She counted time "ras, va, tri" in Russian. "Her husband was simultaneously translating everything she said into English." Because of her commanding presence in classes, "The world began and ended right there in that moment." After a year with her daughter Irina Nijinska, Kent studied with 'Madame' herself. She learned "not to fear competing with men" and that "the light look of dance was merely the surface of a sculpture-there was a mixture of steel and quicksilver at the heart." Work on her Memoirs The last year of her life Nijinska devoted to finishing memoirs about her early life. She had notebooks of her writings and had kept theatrical programs throughout her career. A manuscript of 180,000 words was left completed. Following her death in early 1972, Bronislava Nijinska's daughter Irina Nijinska was named her literary executor. Then she and Jean Rawlingson edited and translated the Russian manuscript into English. They edited the text, and saw it through to publication. The book Early Memoirs appeared in 1981. These writings describe in detail her early years traveling in provincial Russia with her dancer parents, her brother Vaslav's development as a dancer, her schooling and first years as a professional in the Diaghilev era of Russian ballet, and her work assisting her brother in his choreography. During her life, she had published a book and several articles on ballet. "The full autobiographical story of her own career, however, is contained in another set