Margot Fonteyn
Dame Margot Fonteyn (1919 - 1991) was a British ballerina. She was born in Reigate, Surrey, England. Her father was a mechanical engineer, and her mother took care of the children. When Margot Fonteyn was four, the family moved to Ealing. There, her mother enrolled her and her brother in ballet classes. Fonteyn’s mother was very involved, and she made it a point to learn the basics along with her children in order to better understand what a ballet student needed. When she was five, Fonteyn received a favorable review in the local newspaper for her performance in a charity concert.
When Margot Fonteyn was nine, she moved to China with her parents, while her brother attended a boarding school back in England. There, she studied under Georgy Goncharov. She was not a very enthusiastic ballet student, but she would work hard when she felt like there were students against whom she could compete. In 1933, Fonteyn returned to England with her mother who wanted her to pursue a career as a ballet dancer. The following year, Fonteyn’s father wrote to her mother to request a divorce so that he could marry a woman with whom he had been having an affair in China.
Fonteyn started her professional studies with Serafina Astafieva, but was soon noticed by Dame Ninette de Valois, who invited her to enroll in the Vic-Wells Ballet School, which would eventually become the Royal Ballet. She made her debut with the company in 1934. In 1935, when Alicia Markova left the company, Fonteyn shared the lead ballerina position with other dancers before rising to be the primary lead dancer. She performed many roles with the company, including a solo performance in Sleeping Beauty; her interpretation of Aurora set the standard of the time for that role. When it debuted in New York in 1949, it garnered 48 curtain calls. Fonteyn was known for her precise lines and the expressiveness of her dancing. In addition to her classical work, Fonteyn also created roles in ballets by Frederick Ashton, most notably, Ondine.
Fonteyn rehearsing her part in Le Spectre de la Rose with Tamara Karsavina/Public Domain image
In the late 1950s, she began to perform as a guest artist with the Royal Ballet, where she would spend her entire career. It is there that she later partnered with Nureyev, beginning one of the most well-known partnerships in classical ballet. Their partner work in Swan Lake, Raymonda, and others would become iconic.
In 1954, she became president of the Royal Academy of Dance, where she had a profound impact on the development of the syllabus and the expansion of the academy’s program. She retired in 1979, and was elevated to the rank of ballerina assoluta. During her retirement, she wrote The Magic of Dance, which was adapted into a BBC2 television series. She also wrote several other books, including an autobiography.
Sources:
Britannica, T. Editors of Encyclopaedia. "Dame Margot Fonteyn." Encyclopedia Britannica, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Margot-Fonteyn.
“Margot Fonteyn: Kennedy Center.” The Kennedy Center. The Kennedy Center. Accessed February 27, 2023. https://www.kennedy-center.org/artists/f/fo-fz/margot-fonteyn/.
Wikipedia Contributors. 2019. “Margot Fonteyn.” Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation. June 8, 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margot_Fonteyn.
