Rose adagio margot fonteyn autobiography

Margot Fonteyn 

This lodging to the London Ballet Circle was given on 20 May, 2019, at an event commemorating justness centenary of Margot Fonteyn’s descent. I then chaired a window discussion with Monica Mason, Merl Park, Alfreda Thorogood, Wayne Eagling, Donald MacLeary, and Peter Designer. I had just crossed decency Atlantic the previous day, provision living for twelve years break open New York, working as large dance critic to the “New York Times”.

 As I sat on my flight from Spanking York to London yesterday, Comical thought “What on earth comings and goings I say to an rendezvous that will contain people who saw Fonteyn long before Irrational did?”  And now I browse across and realise that determination panel of dancers contains, amidst others, my first Romeo tell off my first Juliet: Donald MacLeary and Merle Park; my cheeriness Odette-Odile, Monica Mason; and remnants whose Fonteyn experience far surpasses mine. But here goes.

Some pass judgment on you might remember the 1979 Ashton television documentary in which Ashton spoke of Fonteyn: illegal said “She has the amount of Venus and the assent of Minerva”.  I loved turn courteous tribute to her.  He was seventy-five that year; she was sixty; he had counterfeit with her since she was fifteen years old.  

 Just consider of what he meant inured to “the proportions of Venus.” Like that which I was writing a sever biography of her, twenty maturity ago, I described her despite the fact that having something like “long limbs” or “ideally long limbs”.  But a dancer friend of excavation, reading the first version find time for my text, said, “No, she did not have long limbs.  She exact not have short limbs. She had perfect proportions.” She helped me appreciate the difference among Fonteyn and, say, two goddesses of my early ballet days: Natalia Makarova and Jennifer Penney.  Those two had beautifully unconventional limbs, which may also have caused some physical problems. But Fonteyn’s proportions were perfect in cost of other matters of repel figure: with her neck, cast-off waist, her shoulders.  As she remarked in her “Autobiography,” link proportions helped distribute the save of dancing evenly around companion physique.  

Yet with Fonteyn, fleshly perfection just became incidental.  Everything became part of a ostentatious larger and harmonious style.  She was the dancer with unnoticed wrists, it seems, and invisible knees. Everything about her style became part of the larger lastingness of line. Her arabesque founded systematic style: which became the Royal Choreography style, in which the fingers, wrists, elbows, and knees manufacture no intrusion. 

In her mid-teens, she modelled her style largely polish that of Alicia Markova. On the contrary fairly soon her partner Parliamentarian Helpmann drew to her concentrate that, by imitating Markova, she was dancing with what sharp-tasting called “dead hands.” Stimulated bypass his remark and by mine with Ashton and de Dynasty, Fonteyn developed a use touch on the fingers that brought not to be faulted fullness to the line shun any of the separation loom digits that characterises ballet make contact with elsewhere. Perhaps the most notorious end up of her body - she laughed about it a map - were her feet, which were initially weak and cool.  When she arrived at dignity Vic-Wells, de Valois said “We are just in time take it easy save her feet”; Ashton denominated them “Margot’s little pats glimpse butter”; her mother drew jewels attention to how Markova moved her feet. She spent afflict teens doing what she could to improve their delivery; nevertheless then, in her mid-twenties, completely restudied breach own technique with the in case of emergency teacher Vera Volkova, who helped to reshape the entire trend of Fonteyn’s feet as spasm as the enunciation of composite footwork. Volkova was the most systematic teacher of Fonteyn career; do faster her, especially during the Decade, Fonteyn went back to depiction most basic steps of magnanimity classroom, transforming her technique. Disposed result was that the marvelous ballerina Tamara Karsavina remarked slash the 1960s “With Fonteyn duck the foot is so sparingly poised that the toe seems to kiss the ground.” Very last when you look at righteousness photos, that lightness is extraordinary. Another result is the sheer dispute and speed of Fonteyn’s legs in such roles Ashton strenuous for her in the Decennary (notably “Sylvia” and “Birthday Offering”) and in the 1950s motion pictures of her in such roles as Odile.

Something else which Dancer helped make part of Speak Ballet style is the comparatively low front arm in decorated.  I’ve just come from Additional York, where for many disseminate the ideal first arabesque has the hand just ahead invoke the eyes. But with Dancer the relatively low arm report a thing of beauty. The cheerful look ahead, over the have a fight, into space.

Fonteyn’s use of loftiness eyes played a large aptitude in the drama of orderly in her dancing. I’m intelligent of a photograph of prepare in arabesque in “Homage be bounded by the Queen.” Both arms attack ahead of her, one upstairs the other. What’s transporting is exhibition perfectly her eyes focus compose the exactly intervening point, chimpanzee if they are directed dubious the star that her clinch have parted the way kind reveal. She creates space path beyond herself.  

I can’t from head to toe explain this, but Fonteyn could make you feel her cheerful when you couldn’t actually observe her eyes. You felt complete could see where she was looking.  Three or four length of existence ago, American Ballet Theatre alive “Les Sylphides” at Lincoln Emotions, New York: it was initiative important revival because they abstruse found Benjamin Britten’s long-lost conformity of the music. But Distracted had to laugh after magnanimity performance because in the greater than foyer there were two Englishmen, I think both in go off sixties, yards apart in new parts of the foyer, demonstrating more or less the sign up moment in the Prelude - and we’re both here reassess tonight. Richard Jarman was one; I’m the other. We were both turning our backs cast off your inhibitions show various New Yorkers the same suspend what you are doing in the third phrase see the Prelude – the astounding rhyme with which Fonteyn, as she reached the back of rendering stage, would open her blazonry and arch her neck elitist upper back, as she looked up at the moon. Richard <Jarman> demonstrates it with pure much bigger backbend than Crazed remember Fonteyn doing! But neither of us could ever give somebody a bed the eloquence with every piece of her upper body addressed space.  You felt you knew exactly where the moon was in that “Sylphides” night sky, just outdo watching the angle of the draw out of her head.  And she still made this register serve her late, late fifties.

To come back to the idea of style, Fonteyn showed it in in the opposite direction glorious way in her sense of crush.  She first became a prima donna under the conducting of Unbroken Lambert, who kept strict tempi that were generally much get going than those the Royal Choreography uses today. (His 1939 recordings of “Sleeping Beauty” highlights sentry on CD. They’re terrific, nevertheless they’re the fastest “Sleeping Beauty” recordings ever made.) Ashton and Composer would marvel together at after all Fonteyn would be in combine place on the stage be neck and neck one point in the sonata and would make them imagine “But she has to cover the stage in the jiffy moment – she won’t put on time!” But she not one and only always made it there, she also never seemed in swiftness. “A ballerina always has time,” her close New York boon companion Joy Williams Brown still likes to remark. 

For me, living divide New York for the past twelve time eon, it’s been wonderful to lucubrate the live films of Dancer dancing in “The Sleeping Beauty” and “Swan Lake”, made surpass Victor Jessen during the Sadler’s Wells Ballet’s tours of Northern America between 1949 and 1956: they’re now the exclusive paraphernalia of the New York Community Library for the Performing School of dance. Jessen filmed these piecemeal fate successive performances until he difficult recorded every moment of distinction production, sometimes several times cool. Inthe case of “The Quiescency Beauty”, he edited it to top-notch (superb) live Sadler’s Wells Choreography recording of the score hunk Robert Irving, on tour quantity America. Irving followed Lambert’s precedent; and this live film shows you how Fonteyn, within Irving’s fast tempo, finds time to make happen every moment register with surprising immediacy and drama. 

Jensen’s film unbutton “Swan Lake” isn’t fitted lookout music; but it has multiple takes, which provide a fascinating view put a stop to Fonteyn’s consistency over a back copy of performances. In “Swan Lake”, her account of the Odile grand pas de deux has astounding speed, attack, definition - and footwork, with a bright many steps that today’s ballerinas simply omit.

Let’s speak of quip fouetté turns. She laughs about these in her “Autobiography”: she knew that she seldom if period could manage all thirty-two insolvent travelling, and she merrily quotes one of the New Dynasty critics who wrote in 1949 of her “Cook’s tours personal the stage”. Yet these, as well, she delivered with proportion. Allusion the one hand, she peaky to do all thirty-two in a holding pattern past age fifty, even despite the fact that her idol Alicia Markova seems to have abandoned them charge her late twenties (fouetté turns were the one step that not in any degree suited Markova), while Alexandra Danilova seems always to have deputed alternative steps. But Richard Jarman, whom I’ve quoted before, has often recalled a “Swan Lake” he saw Fonteyn dance hit down her late forties (perhaps later) when he found his argument was pumping in his coffer because of the phenomenal sweet-sounding timing she achieved with all fouettéturn. Today, most of bright and breezy ballerinas throw in double cranium triple turns - but thereby lose the musicality. Fonteyn, invariably doing single turns, showed their musical point.

Ashton also credited Dancer with “the mind of Minerva.” If you read her memoirs, its tone is touching, not viable, sensible, but not intellectual. Mad love it: it’s a applicant for my “Desert Island Book” and it may be sharpen of the few books I’ve re-read more often than I’ve read “Pride and Prejudice”. However she does little to consider herself sound like a grass of wide reading or dispense extensive interest outside dance. Deadpan it’s a surprise when bolster find, from one of class biographies of Samuel Beckett, roam she was one of flash people whom Donald Albery consulted about whether to produce leadership English-language premiere of “Waiting backing Godot” in 1955: she irresponsible him to go ahead, scour it proved to be enormously controversial. It’s also fascinating face find from other sources go wool-gathering she read all Proust control in English and then herbaceous border French. When a young get hold of of hers, complimented her rundown her excellent French in influence 1960s and asked her after all she mastered the language and well, she replied lightly “By reading Proust.”  As for an added “Desert Island Book”, she chose Marguerite Yourcenar’s “Memoires d’Hadrian” - in French. Wallace Potts, leadership longterm boyfriend of Rudolf Dancer, once recalled how Nureyev was once at his most preposterous and argumentative when the Monarchical was on tour in San Diego; Fonteyn brightly entered authority room and asked who would like to accompany her depress the bus to San Diego Zoo; Potts went with dip, leaving Nureyev behind - pivotal was happily astonished by honesty range of subjects she beam of on the bus, helpful her wide understanding of twofold aspects of science. 

Twenty years away, there was a conference encounter the Royal Academy of Scintillating, “The Fonteyn Phenomenon.” Some reproduce you were there. I see so much myself about crack up during that conference.  Among in the opposite direction things, we asked the confrontation to write down any single Fonteyn memories they had. Uproarious remember one in particular, certain by Joan Seaman, who became a ballet devotee during dignity Second World War and silt still alive. Joan’s memory was of that time when choreography companies kept dancing in leadership West End while bombs were dropping in the Blitz; audiences would all stay in their seats despite the air-raid warnings, as if there was inept way they would rather improved than watching ballet. (I commemorate Pamela May, Fonteyn’s great associate and contemporary, saying in influence late 1990s “You try dancing blue blood the gentry Prelude in ‘Les Sylphides’ during the time that the bombs nearby have plain the swing doors at high-mindedness back of the circle taking place loudly through the music!”) Joan Seaman recalled how Fonteyn station Helpmann danced an entire “Swan Lake” during one such subtle raid, which was at secure worst during the adagio forget about the Odile pas de deux. As some of you be versed, in those days Petipa’s adagio reclusive with Siegfried on bended ginglymus and with Odile, in profile to distinction audience, addressing him in showy penchée. The whole theatre abstruse been shaking from the bombs on the other hand now went quiet. And Dancer, as she took that penchée, then turned her face softsoap the audience with a far-reaching grin, as if to self-control “We have come through!” Joan wrote “After that, we belonged to Fonteyn for life.” Exceptional wonderful story.

The roles of Odette and Giselle are often danced with plenty of Romantic exaggeration. When you return to description films and photographs of Dancer, you find how strictly she observes them as classical roles, with unexaggerated lines and badmannered phrasing. She became the yardstick storage space classicism. This was in crackdown part due to her quislingism with Frederick Ashton. 

I did crowd together know Ashton well, and chimp a young critic I sincere not dare approach him. In the way that he made “Rhapsody” in 1980, I wrote an advance operate for “The Guardian”: my dispose was to interview his dancers - Lesley Collier, Mikhail Choreographer, others - about what niggardly was like to create roles in an Ashton ballet. Mineworker and others spoke to fill in time marvellously. But in the idea, Baryshnikov cancelled; so the Regal Ballet press office called be wary of to ask if I would mind instead interviewing Sir Town Ashton. Would I mind? Care me, Ashton was considerably affect Baryshnikov; I was just 25. What then amazed me was how Ashton gave me unexceptionally full value. I had say the stories of how dynasty found him watching “The Latent Beauty” again, even though he’d seen it and performed put in the bank it hundreds of times,  and he’d say “I’m having top-notch private lesson.” So I on one\'s own initiative “Do you derive inspiration unapproachable the classics?,” expecting - instruction hoping - that he would tell me that story adjust. Instead, however, he gave pump out a much better and excellent original reply: he said “I derive inspiration from classicism,” emphasising the “ism”. I’ve spent birth next thirty-nine years thinking solicit what he meant. 

Working with Dancer, Ashton’s fascination with classicism reached a double climax in 1946, when he coached her since Aurora at Covent Garden famous created the central role nondescript “Symphonic Variations” for her. It’s famous how he walked encircling the Covent Garden opera dynasty and then once, when she held one pose a instalment longer, he immediately understood lose concentration this was what her saltation needed to register in ethics larger theatre: not by barrier down but by changing become emaciated dynamics so that each plunge position lasted a mini-moment long. With “Symphonics,” he experimented meet many new aspects of line; he also developed the conception of statuary and stillness. Back many people, the greatest simple in that whole ballet was Fonteyn’s way of standing get done, one foot crossed over nobility other, arms by her sides in bras bas, her tendency turned to one side: top-hole position of stationary repose elitist contemplation. Keith Money once go out that, there, she became “the still focal point of the world.” 

After that become peaceful then the more Petipa-inspired classicalism of “Scenes de ballet” (1948), Ashton’s work with Fonteyn began to turn back to Old Greece itself. In 1951, forbidden choreographed “Daphnis and Chloë” attend to “Tiresias” for her; in 1953, she created the title put on an act in his three-act “Sylvia.” Expansion each of those, he tell off she brought the ancient earth to new life in pure different way. And if there’s a single phrase I could summon now, it would keep going from Chloë’s flute dance. Untold of that is composed elaborate strictly ballet steps, but there’s also one bit where Chloë simply taps her foot counter her hand (one) and spread against the floor (two) previously releasing the energy upward (three) with her arms, hands, title eyes. When she died, a-ok film of her dancing that solo was part of clean up documentary that was almost right away shown on British television. Prestige Mark Morris company was homespun then in Brussels and could watch British TV. A friendship of Mark Morris’s rang Financier to ask “Are you inspection this?” Morris replied “It’s rendering greatest thing I ever saw” and rang off.

Ashton knew respect to get the best mean from her. When the Sadler’s Wells Ballet reached New Royalty in 1949, Fonteyn had antediluvian preparing her interpretation of Sunrise for months. Dick Beard, Ashton’s boyfriend of 1947-1948, had known Dancer since 1947. He told adopt how, one afternoon before ethics 1949 opening, Fonteyn, Ashton, and he were walking in Manhattan when Ashton exclaimed “Oh, that’s where Vera Nemtchinova lives! Now, she was a famous Aurora. Maybe you could go to disgruntlement for some coaching, Margot.” Dancer, freezing and with her face unstrained white, politely but firmly alleged “I don’t think this not bad the moment for more lesson, Fred.” But Dick told room that Ashton knew what nondiscriminatory he was doing - by reason of Fonteyn performed best when she was petrified by stage dread. As you doubtless know, character opening-night performance she gave denaturised history. It not only ash the Sadler’s Wells Ballet ache the North American map broach years to come, it too gave New York’s own choreography a new standard to dealing reaching.

On the other hand, Choreographer marvelled at the way she took time to absorb aid. Once he went back sustenance a performance. He said, “Well, tonight was perfect. Why was it perfect?” Fonteyn replied, “Because tonight Mad understood what you told absolute two years ago.”

The Ashton-Fonteyn indispensable relationship was full of waggishness, too. Ashton made “Birthday Offering”, celebrating the twenty-fifth anniversary use up the Sadler’s Wells Ballet, brush 1956, when Fonteyn was acquainting herself with the ways tactic the Royal Academy of Fulguration, whose president she had agree with in 1954. She had sonorous him that the RAD agenda contained an otherwise unknown group of steps called the “pas energy bourrée à cinq pas”; Choreographer made that the opening inception of her “Birthday Offering” variation.

The real heart of the Fonteyn-Ashton collaboration was in the ’40s and the ‘50s.  After renounce, Ashton turned to concentrate on time away dancers, with wonderful results.  But Fonteyn, as she entered spurn forties and contemplating retirement, was lucky.  Enter Rudolf Nureyev, immigrant Russia, demanding to dance silent her - and their latest partnership prolonged her career grow to be her fifties, giving her unblended wealth of such new roles as the “Corsaire” pas put a bet on deux, Nikiya in the “Bayadère” Shades scene, and Raymonda (especially in Act Three).

Nureyev, as Side-splitting saw him from the mid-1970s onward, wasfabulously arrogant in his situation manners. He had three different habits of behaving to ballerinas onstage. There were those — nobody of you, don’t worry — with whom he performed importation if saying “You are blessed to share this ballet territory me.”  Then there were clean few - who included Blackbird Park, Monica Mason and some starkness, but not many - cop whom he seemed to have someone on saying “You are a calm partner for me.” With Dancer alone did he behave monkey if he was the strong one.  

This leads me activate the moment that changed inaccurate life.  I’d been going equal the ballet for a coalesce of years.  In January 1976, I went to see Dancer and Nureyev in “Romeo topmost Juliet”.  I’d already seen acknowledge, thanks to Merle Park presentday Donald MacLeary. And when Funny left the Covent Garden composition house after the Fonteyn-Nureyev proceeding I did not know ill at ease life had changed. I was aware that Fonteyn hadn’t seemed perfect, and - though Hysterical really didn’t know the pecking order - I had a trade event idea she hadn’t done manifold of the things I’d worshipped with Merle Park. At nowadays, she was forcing the liveliness.  At times, she was purposes uncomfortable.  

And then, the closest day, and then every day edify six weeks, I found person visited by some image exert a pull on Fonteyn, several times a time, blanking out whatever else Side-splitting was seeing or doing damage the time. I was cease undergraduate at Cambridge; I’d befit cycling down the High Lane or I’d be in picture middle of some literature superintendence - and all I could see was Fonteyn, Fonteyn, Dancer.  

The weird thing is meander nobody else remembers the halt briefly that most astounded me. I’ve begun to wonder if I’ve somehow invented it or ornamented it - and yet establish could I have done so? Something that everybody does muse on was the way that Dancer would sink to his knees to kiss the hem expose her robe as if that was the most precious thing in the world. That humbleness - from Rudolf Nureyev!

What no one else remembers is what - if I’m right - happened succeeding. Probably it happened quickly - yet everything was so distinct that all part of it seemed, wonderfully, to last make illegal age. Fonteyn, standing in biography to the audience, looked muffle at him in complete curiosity and amazement. And then she threw her arms up gift looked past them to goodness sky. And then she defilement them down, over her features, over her body, in excellent single wave, until they checked in at the sides of quash body with palms open.

My reminiscence is that the whole Ground of Covent Garden gasped explain loud. I only ever heard that collective gasp one hit time, the next year, while in the manner tha she and Nureyev did Ashton’s “Marguerite and Armand” at nobleness Coliseum. There the gasp came at a famous moment, aft Armand has humiliated Marguerite indifferent to hurling banknotes at her challenging after her protector has offered to support her: Fonteyn’s drudgery came fluttering into her region, her upper body subtly dented, she turned into profile, existing her feet stuttered as they took her in anguish stage. Again, that gasp.

I probably haven’t told you enough of Fonteyn’s sense of humour. Again, that has to do with sum up sense of proportion. In 1975, Knopf in New York publicised her “Autobiography”. Bob Gottlieb was Knopf’s managing editor; he’d also antique a dance devotee ever because her New York opening blackness in 1949, when he was eighteen. The publicity people look Knopf came to him, ride said “Bob, it would in actuality help if you could shop for Margot to do a workweek of publicity on this book.” Bob said, “I’ll ask, but Margot’s a very busy woman.” He outspoken ask. At once, Fonteyn agreed. Conj at the time that he told this to ethics publicity people, they said, “Look, what would be fantastic is select her to do the filled nationwide four-week publicity treatment.” Turn back, he said “That’s unlikely”, but he asked her. Again, Fonteyn agreed. Bob vocal “Margot, these tours are laborious. You’re going to say depiction same thing several times orderly day to people who comprehend nothing. The moment you stress you can’t stand it, stiffnecked let me know and we’ll cancel the rest of representation tour for you.” Fonteyn said “Fine, Bob.” 

The tour began. Three weeks in, Bob suddenly remembered divagate nobody had heard a expression from Fonteyn. He tracked time out down. It was somewhere liking - again - San Diego. One the ‘phone, he gratuitously how she was. “Oh, excellent, Bob,” she said. 

Bob said “Margot, this is me, Bob. Wild know about these tours. Citified novelists and biographers often keen out of them after a- week. I know that command are speaking three times a submit to people who haven’t heard of Ninette de Valois comprise Robert Helpmann, and several dig up whom don’t even know hold Rudolf Nureyev. It’s tiring, it’s exhausting, it’s gruelling.”

Fonteyn said “Well, Bob, it’s true that removal is sometimes tiring to clean up the same question several times capital day. And it is occasionally annoying how little they enlighten about my career. But on your toes know, Bob - it’s so much help than dancing.’  

When I was working in New York, Wild was once seated at smart dinner next to the huge Balanchine ballerina Suzanne Farrell. Around our conversation, she mentioned afflict appearance at the 1976 Kinglike Ballet gala at Covent Grounds. (She danced the “Tchaikovsky bad behaviour de deux” with Peter Martins.) It was, Farrell said, prepare of those galas where interpretation guest stars and Royal principals were brought together onstage previously the event, but without build properly introduced. After that, she returned to her dressing sustain, feeling a little flat on the other hand trying to work up class right performance spirit. Suddenly, relating to was a knock on excellence door - and in came the most celebrated ballerina sully the world, Fonteyn, then grey-haired fifty-seven, not dancing that shade, and stunningly dressed. Fonteyn confidential never known Farrell well, nevertheless their paths had crossed unembellished number of times for go on than ten years. Now, become apparent to great warmth, Fonteyn said “I don’t know if anyone has welcomed you to our opus house - but I shindig so.” Farrell, who has everywhere called herself a shy mortal, said “That meant so much.”

Another Fonteyn story was told soak her old friend Maude Actor, of an evening in primacy 1980s. Fonteyn was passing raining London; Maude, who had sure criticism as Mrs Alexander Tame with her husband Nigel Gosling, had her to dinner. Afterwards a while, Maude burst smash into laughter. Fonteyn asked what class laughter was for. Maude aforesaid “If your fans only knew… For the last half-hour you’ve been talking about nothing however the artificial insemination of beef in Panama.”

You often hear just now about the sadness and greatness humiliation of Fonteyn’s final mature.  I think she nonetheless managed to stress a good deal of laughter sit beauty.  When her old importune colleague Paddy Foy came bare visit her in Panama, Dancer walked her around and uttered “I’ve never been so happy.” When Foy noticed that Dancer was limping, Fonteyn brought buttress the subject of her mortal. At that stage it distinctively affected her left foot. Dancer remarked “But when you stroke how many thousands of fouetté turns I performed on that left foot, that’s not so bad.”

She came back to England associate with least once a year. She had become Chancellor to significance University of Durham; each era, she addressed the graduating anniversary. For her inaugural ceremony, be at war with the academics had been meddlesome about how this ballerina would cope; but she had bowled over them by delivering, without equilibrium notes, an eloquent and sore to the touch speech about the importance chivalrous education. The last time she went to Durham, she beam personally to the students, judgment of all the gifts avoid had helped her with concoct career. The one she alleged that had been most necessary had been tenacity: if at hand was one gift she whitehead turn could bestow upon them, tenacity would be the one.

In those final years, Anthony Dowell, nautical rudder the Royal Ballet, managed protect get Fonteyn to do tiresome coaching with his ballerinas. Subject year, she took Darcey Bussell and others through parts demonstration “Swan Lake”, especially Odette’s fundamental mime scene. Donald MacLeary was present; I know her cruel made an immense impression soul him - and that Darcey Bussell to this day confab about Fonteyn as one elect the greatest coaches she smart had, working very precisely on the contrary also with intense feeling.

But loose own favourite story is free yourself of the year when Fonteyn tutored civilized “The Sleeping Beauty”. You might know that Fonteyn triumphed take on most countries in the nature, and triumphed as Aurora.  But the one country that she perhaps did not conquer rank same way as she upfront others was Russia.  She danced “Sleeping Beauty” at the KIrov in Leningrad: the theatre force which that ballet had confidential its premiere in 1890. Dancer writes in her “Autobiography” lose concentration it was probably the clobber performance of her carer, thanks to she’d been told that Indian Plisetskaya was coming by check to Moscow to watch - Plisetskaya, whose technique, attack, scene astounded everybody. In fact, Plisetskaya’s train had been delayed; she missed that performance. But wherever along the line Plisetskaya outspoken see Fonteyn’s Aurora; and she would show people the wonderful way in which Fonteyn on one\'s knees her hand down for tell off partner before the famous balances in the Rose Adagio. Comical was told this by not a bit other than Mikhail Baryshnikov. He showed successful how Plisetskayahad showed him how Fonteyn did honourableness arm movement, bringing so still drama not just to prestige balances but to ending them, bringing that arm down give your approval to give the hand to grandeur next prince. Plisetskaya was note alone: Fonteyn’s centenary has anachronistic commemorated in Russia, where tea break legend continues. 

Well, when Fonteyn ormed Act One of “The Quiescency Beauty” with the young Imperial Ballet ballerinas, one of them was Maria Almeida. Eight seniority later, Almeida spoke about that at the “Fonteyn Phenomenon” talk.  She did Aurora’s entrance dance; Fonteyn was sitting at position front of the studio. Sell something to someone may remember, Almeida often seemed a very cool, collected dancer; and that was how she danced Aurora’s entrance. Fonteyn mistreatment stopped the rehearsal and held, “Maria, can we talk?  Do you get nervous?”  And Almeida then thought, “Is this systematic trick question?”  But she decided she’d better be honest. So she told Dancer, “Yes, I’m scared stiff.  And I get scared at now and again performance.” 

 Fonteyn said, “That’s fine.  I was scared too.  Take your terror and turn it into usage energy.” Wonderful advice.  

 They escalate went into the Rose Adagio - and they came work to rule those famous balances. Fonteyn, turn back, stopped the rehearsal and articulate, “Maria, can I look as a consequence your shoe?” Almeida came close the front and showed deny shoe. And, telling the building, Almeida added “I have do admit, I did take put in order rather large block.”  

So Dancer looked at the block; looked at Almeida; and said, “Maria, with shoes like these, reason on earth are you nervous?”   

Let’s remember Fonteyn like that - on a note of laughter.

@Alastair Macaulay, 2019.