"The one important thing I have learnt over the years is the difference between taking one's work seriously and taking one's life seriously. The first is imperative and the second, disastrous." So decreed the legendary ballerina who was born Margaret Hookham,...
[more]"The one important thing I have learnt over the years is the difference between taking one's work seriously and taking one's life seriously. The first is imperative and the second, disastrous." So decreed the legendary ballerina who was born Margaret Hookham, nicknamed Peggy, and eventually became known as Dame Margot Fonteyn.
The young Margaret began dancing at age four and at age six saw Anna Pavlova perform "The Fairy Doll." She told her mother that she thought she might do Pavlova one better with an Irish jig. Margot's mother took this dubious enthusiasm and ran with it, yanking her out of school altogether at 14 to study dance full-time. Margot entered the school of Sadler's Wells Theatre in London with hopes of becoming a character or tap dancer, but her instructors soon groomed her for the ballet. It didn't seem an obvious choice -- although later praised for "expressive arms and miraculous proportions," she was initially criticized for feet "like pats of butter" and a "superior attitude."
Despite the rough beginning, her mature dancing was fluid, exact, and emotionally lush. Robert Helpman, Fonteyn's dance partner for years, said she could make you want to cry. She could also be fully electric; in "Ondine" she was a breathless, splashy nymph who caused audiences to rise impatiently from their seats. She made them dance-hungry. When Sadler's Wells Ballet became the Royal Ballet, Fonteyn became a star (a fact she tried adamantly to ignore until she found herself on the cover of both Time and Newsweek).
In 1955 Fonteyn married her long-time love Roberto "Tito" Arias, the ambassador-son of the former Panamanian president. Fonteyn's lifestyle changed as a diplomat's wife but not her worldview. She still preferred to be known only as a dancer, even though she became involved in all sorts of political maneuverings -- even getting arrested in connection with her husband's attempt to overthrow Panama's military government. Fonteyn felt politics made a good story, but she was unconcerned with its subtler implications. She didn't understand all the fuss when she chose to dance in South Africa in the apartheid years or in Chile for Pinochet. For her, ballet was everything.
At 42, Fonteyn met Rudolph Nureyev. Just when her dancing career seemed at a close, this May-December partnership gave it new life. The two danced like they were meant for each other: he made her weightless, she drew him liquidly along with her every move. Nureyev replaced the typically staid concentration of the ballet cavalier with partnering that swayed with Fonteyn and was feather-light.
Into her 50s, Fonteyn could still pull off the ballerina's requisite bravura feat of 32 fouett's -- straight upright, legs razor sharp and supremely swift. But it was mainly her sparkling presence that gave her later years of waning flexibility style and grace. Her back, neck, and arms always remained very strong and very mobile, even in her retirement performance at the age of 60.
In her biography Fonteyn proclaimed, "Dancing was something to be taken very seriously when engaged in and otherwise put out of mind." This is a refreshing credo -- especially for an artist who was graced with the rare titles of "prima ballerina assoluta" by the Royal Ballet and Dame of the British Empire by the country.
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