My very first sighting of Maria was at the Royal Ballet School when she came to teach character dancing, around 1962. A group of us huddled together outside the Sadler's Wells studio and were completely swept off our prim little ballet feet! We watched this incredibly sexy, beautiful, musical, alluring expressive woman giving us a taste of how to perform (yes perform!) character dancing. That was my wake-up call. I then started going to her studio for her morning and afternoon ballet classes and really started to develop as a dancer and as a person. She introduced me to Sartre and existential philosophy and she inspired me, giving me confidence in a way that was new to me. There are too many special memories to think about all at once.