MARGOT FONTEYN
On what would have been the legendary ballerina’s 100th birthday Amanda Hodges explores a dazzling life tainted by hardship and sadness.
GREAT artists are people who find the way to be themselves in their art. Any sort of pretension induces mediocrity in art and life alike.” So declared Margot Fonteyn, who epitomised this creed. She was the quintessential ballerina. Loyal star of the Royal Ballet for over four decades, she was technically assured, certainly, but the real key to her enduring appeal lay in her authenticity. She possessed a capacity to suggest great reserves of emotion without any recourse to melodrama, her expressive, elegant dancing being both timeless and ageless.
It says much about her that she was still dancing professionally at the age of 60, the rarely bestowed title of Prima Ballerina Assoluta being conferred upon her for her landmark birthday that year. A dancer who may not, surprisingly, have had the ideal feet, but who possessed “soft, unshowy lyricism and beautiful purity of line” – as her most recent biographer Meredith Daneman emphasises. By this stage in her career Fonteyn was “the most famous ballerina in the world”.
But how did Margaret “Peggy” Hookham from Reigate in Surrey become this universally revered icon of classical ballet?
The daughter of a British father and half Irish, half Brazilian mother, she was born on May 18, 1919, and was enrolled for ballet lessons at the age of four, immediately displaying an innate aptitude for dance. As a young girl her family moved to Shanghai for her father’s work, and she studied dance there under the tutelage of Russian émigré teacher George Goncharov.
Returning to London in her early teens, she was fortunate enough to be accepted at the Vic-Wells Ballet School (the precursor to today’s Royal Ballet School) and at sixteen adopted the stage name by which she’s known today; her real name being considered distinctly unglamorous. A dedicated student, Fonteyn’s ascendancy, under the careful eye of Vic-Wells’s Ninette De Valois, would mark the debut of
the first homegrown British ballet star as a time when prima ballerinas were invariably French or Russian.
She began to perform in the main company, principally partnering Robert Helpmann and, later, Michael Somes, taking on roles suited to her from the classical repertoire like Giselle and Swan Lake, and becoming the muse of choreographer Frederick Ashton in ballets like Daphnis and Chloe and Sylvia. Her portrayal of Aurora in The Sleeping Beauty caused a sensation when it premiered in America in 1949, and American audiences remained vociferous in their appreciation of her performances throughout her career. Often people would shred their programmes and shower them like confetti at the end of a performance.
The company was renamed Sadler’s Wells in 1946 and moved into its Covent Garden home. Later it was given a royal charter in 1956, adopting its current name of the Royal Ballet. Fonteyn would soon become a worldwide star, attracting honours such as gracing the cover of Time magazine, dancing on America’s Ed Sullivan Show, being made a dame in 1956, and even becoming Chancellor of Durham University.
With her perfect dancer’s proportions she made the part of Odette in Swan Lake her own, as well as the luminous Firebird, and her character found perhaps its perfect expression in the delicate lyricism and vulnerability embodied by Ondine, the water nymph – a role with which she became indelibly associated.
After recovering from diphtheria in the 1950s, her reappearance at the end of Apparitions was greeted with overwhelming applause. Endless curtain calls left no-one in any doubt as to how Fonteyn was perceived – she was the star ballerina of the day, loved and revered in equal measure.
“Tito rescued the human heart trapped inside the ballerina” was how Fonteyn described her relationship with Roberto “Tito” Arias, whom she married in 1955; he was then a Panamanian delegate to the United Nations. She’d known him briefly in her late teens and they’d lost touch, but years later they renewed their relationship. It would be a very tumultuous marriage, due to his playboy ways, and in 1959 the couple would become embroiled in an unsuccessful coup (initiated by Tito). In 1964 he was shot by a political rival, and for the rest of his life remained a quadriplegic, the devoted Fonteyn dancing as long as she could to raise the necessary funds for his medical care.
By the late Fifties her fame had grown to such gargantuan proportions that she was receiving many requests to dance elsewhere, and the Royal Ballet allowed her the freedom of becoming a guest artist.
Later she then considered retirement when fate intervened. Fonteyn had always maintained, “Ballet is more than a profession – it is a way of life” and this philosophy was something shared by another sublimely talented dancer, who caused world headlines in 1961 with his defection to the West.
The mercurial Rudolf Nureyev was a young Russian dancer from what was then known as the Kirov Ballet Company. He was fêted in his homeland, but was feeling claustrophobic, constrained by the travelling restrictions of his
On tour in Paris and monitored by the ever-present KGB, he impulsively decided to seek political asylum in the West.
Once this was achieved, the dance world was his oyster. Ninette De Valois, first artistic director of The Royal Ballet, commented, “You have to remember that Fonteyn was an established international ballerina when he first came here and it was one of his great ambitions to dance with her.” He was initially invited by Fonteyn to perform at a charity matinee, but it wasn’t until February 21, 1962, that the second and possibly greatest chapter in Fonteyn’s career began when she danced in Giselle with Nureyev at Covent Garden.
Over 70,000 expectant fans were turned away, but those lucky enough to secure seats witnessed a dance phenomenon that day. Complete silence greeted the end of the ballet and then, suddenly, rapturous applause engulfed the auditorium. Nureyev sank to one knee and kissed Fonteyn’s hand – a gesture enthusiastically embraced by the adoring crowd. Their adulation knew no bounds and the star couple took over 20 curtain calls before they were reluctantly relinquished.
There’s a lovely story that concerns Nureyev’s initial stay at the Panama Embassy during this period. Fonteyn could see that her volatile guest was feeling uncomfortable and asked him why. To her amusement he replied, in typically flamboyant fashion, “I am like dying. Four days, I hear no music!” Unusually, Fonteyn didn’t play music in private. So completely was she absorbed by it on stage that she felt no need for any outside performances.
To the outside world their dynamic partnership, which would give
Fonteyn another decade at the top of her profession, might look surprising. But she felt otherwise.
“I believe that our partnership would not have been quite such a success if it hadn’t been for the difference in our ages. I’d go out on the stage thinking, who’s going to look at me with this young lion leaping ten feet high in the air and doing all those fantastic things. And Rudolf had this deep respect because I was this older, famous, established ballerina. So it charged the performance that we were both going out there inspired by the other one, and somehow it just worked.”
So symbiotic did their partnership prove that new ballets were created just for them, principally Marguerite and Armand and the debut of Kenneth Macmillan’s Romeo and Juliet. Fonteyn remained “exquisite and ageless”, as attested by my own mother, who witnessed some of these legendary performances in the 1960s.
Clement Crisp, former dance critic of The Financial Times, analysed the source of their palpable chemistry with perception.
“Sometimes two artists . . . react and intensify each other’s qualities.” He envisaged a scenario where “Dame Margot: lyrical, classically very correct . . . is suddenly confronted by this fiery, burning young dancer, marked, obviously, by genius. It was an artistic love affair . . . conducted in public.”
Fonteyn would say of her enduring friendship with Nureyev, one which continued until the end of her life, that “a strange attachment formed between us which we have never been able to explain satisfactorily, and which, in a way, one could describe as deep affection or love, especially if one believes that love has many forms and degrees.” For Nureyev it was a pivotal relationship, as he later reflected, “It was very lucky for us to have those glorious years. She became a very, very great friend of mine. We danced with one body, one soul. To me she is part of my family.”
In the 1970s Fonteyn spent much of her time living very simply at home in Panama in near poverty, devoting much of her time to Tito. But she and Nureyev remained in contact and she returned for her 60th birthday gala performance in 1979.
Tito died in 1989 and she was then diagnosed with cancer, but friends came to her aid, Nureyev paying many of her medical bills since her funds had been decimated by her husband’s health. Fonteyn died in February 1991, but her influence and enduring legacy remain unassailable.
Former ballerina Darcey Bussell, who was fortunate enough to receive coaching from her in 1990, discovered that it was story-telling, rather than technique, which lay at the heart of Fonteyn’s appeal. This explains why it was never necessary for her to be the best technically; her natural gifts allowed her to beguile an audience with the sheer beauty and emotional poignancy of her performance.
As Fonteyn once wrote, “Genius is another word for magic, and the whole point of magic is that it is inexplicable.” Today students at the Royal Ballet’s Lower School have a life-size statue of Fonteyn in the foyer and it’s considered good luck to touch this when passing by. Now, this year, on what would have been her hundredth birthday, The Royal Ballet is preparing to pay tribute to one of its greatest stars again with Margot Fonteyn: A Celebration being staged on June 8, 2019.
Kevin O’Hare, Director of The Royal Ballet, says of Fonteyn, “She was an icon of British ballet and a celebrity beyond the stage, her impact and influence without parallel. It’s a privilege to honour our Prima Ballerina Assoluta with this one-off performance in her centenary year.”
For further details of this event, visit www.roh.org.uk.