Margot Fonteyn
Dame Margaret Evelyn de Arias DBE, known by the stage name Margot Fonteyn, was an English ballerina. She spent her entire career as a dancer with the Royal Ballet, eventually being appointed prima ballerina assoluta of the company by Queen Elizabeth II.
Beginning ballet lessons at the age of four, she studied in England and China, where her father was transferred for his work. Her training in Shanghai was with Russian expatriate dancer Georgy Goncharov, contributing to her continuing interest in Russian ballet. Returning to London at the age of 14, she was invited to join the Vic-Wells Ballet School by Ninette de Valois. She succeeded Alicia Markova as prima ballerina of the company in 1935. The Vic-Wells choreographer, Sir Frederick Ashton, wrote numerous parts for Fonteyn and her partner, Robert Helpmann, with whom she danced from the 1930s to the 1940s.
In 1946, the company, now renamed the Sadler's Wells Ballet, moved into the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden where Fonteyn's most frequent partner throughout the next decade was Michael Somes. Her performance in Tchaikovsky's The Sleeping Beauty became a distinguishing role for both Fonteyn and the company, but she was also well known for the ballets created by Ashton, including Symphonic Variations, Cinderella, Daphnis and Chloe, Ondine and Sylvia.
In 1949, she led the company in a tour of the United States and became an international celebrity. Before and after the Second World War, Fonteyn performed in televised broadcasts of ballet performances in Britain and in the early 1950s appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show, consequently increasing the popularity of dance in the United States.
In 1955, she married the Panamanian politician Roberto Arias and appeared in a live colour production of The Sleeping Beauty aired on NBC. Three years later, she and Somes danced for the BBC television adaptation of The Nutcracker. Thanks to her international acclaim and many guest artist requests, the Royal Ballet allowed Fonteyn to become a freelance dancer in 1959.
In 1961, when Fonteyn was considering retirement, Rudolf Nureyev defected from the Kirov Ballet while dancing in Paris. Fonteyn, though reluctant to partner with him because of their 19-year age difference, danced with him in his début with the Royal Ballet in Giselle on 21 February 1962. The duo immediately became an international sensation, each dancer pushing the other to their best performances. They were most noted for their classical performances in works such as Le Corsaire Pas de Deux, Les Sylphides, La Bayadère, Swan Lake, and Raymonda, in which Nureyev sometimes adapted choreographies specifically to showcase their talents. The pair premièred Ashton's Marguerite and Armand, which had been choreographed specifically for them, and were noted for their performance in the title roles of Sir Kenneth MacMillan's Romeo and Juliet.
The following year, Fonteyn's husband was shot during an assassination attempt and became a quadriplegic, requiring constant care for the remainder of his life. In 1972, Fonteyn went into semi-retirement, although she continued to dance periodically until the end of the decade. In 1979, she was fêted by the Royal Ballet and officially pronounced the prima ballerina assoluta of the company. She retired to Panama, where she spent her time writing books, raising cattle, and caring for her husband. She died from ovarian cancer exactly 29 years after her premiere with Nureyev in Giselle.
Early life (1919–1934)
Margaret Evelyn Hookham was born on 18 May 1919 in Reigate, Surrey, to Hilda and Felix John Hookham. Her father was a British mechanical engineer, who worked for the British-American Tobacco Company. Her mother was the illegitimate daughter of an Irish woman, Evelyn Acheson, and the Brazilian industrialist Antonio Gonçalves Fontes. Hookham had one sibling, her older brother Felix. The family moved to Ealing, where her mother sent her four-year-old daughter with her brother to ballet classes with Grace Bosustow. Her mother accompanied Hookham to her earliest lessons, learning the basic positions alongside her daughter in order to improve her understanding of what a ballet student needed to develop. Over the years, Hilda provided constant support, guidance and critique to her daughter; she became a well-known backstage presence at Hookham's performances, earning the nickname "Black Queen" from Hookham's teachers and colleagues. While some children might have balked at such overbearing attention from a parent, Hookham accepted her mother's help with "affectionate and unembarrassed naturalness".In July 1924, at the age of five, Hookham danced in a charity concert and received her first newspaper review: the Middlesex Country Times noted that the young dancer had performed "a remarkably fine solo" which had been "vigorously encored" by the audience. Even during her early years, Hookham showed signs of the pressure she felt to succeed in her dancing, often pushing herself physically to avoid becoming a disappointment to others. Whenever a dance exam approached, she became ill with a high fever for several days, recovering just in time to take the test. Hookham's father began preparing to move his family abroad for work. It was decided, after consultation, that they would take their daughter with them but leave their son Felix at an English boarding school. For Hookham, this new separation from her sibling was a painful experience. Her father was transferred first to Louisville, Kentucky, where Hookham attended school but did not take ballet lessons, as her mother was skeptical about the quality of the local dance school. When Peggy – as she was called in her childhood – was nine, she and her parents moved to China.
For about a year, the family lived in Tianjin. This was followed by a brief stint in Hong Kong before they moved to Shanghai in 1931, where Hookham studied ballet with the Russian émigré teacher Georgy Goncharov. Goncharov's partner Vera Volkova later became influential in Hookham's career and training. Hookham had no dreams of becoming a dancer and was a reluctant student, but she was competitive. Having June Brae in her classes pushed her to work harder. She did not like the Cecchetti drills, preferring the fluid expression of the Russian style. Her mother brought her back to London when she was 14, to pursue a ballet career. In 1934, Hookham's father wrote from Shanghai, explaining he had been having an affair. He asked his wife for a divorce so that he could marry his new girlfriend. Continuing to work in Shanghai, her father was interned during World War II from 1943 to 1945 by the invading Japanese. After the war, he returned to England with his second wife, Beatrice.
Hookham began her studies with Serafina Astafieva, but was spotted by Dame Ninette de Valois and invited to join the Vic-Wells Ballet School, which would later become the Royal Ballet. She trained under Olga Preobrajenska and Volkova. Her first solo performance occurred in 1933, as an actress rather than a dancer, using the interim name Margot Fontes, as a child in the production of The Haunted Ballroom by de Valois. In 1934, she danced as a snowflake in The Nutcracker, still using the name Fontes. Although Hookham's mother had written to her Fontes relatives, requesting their permission for her daughter to use the name for her stage career, the final response was no, possibly due to the family's wish to avoid an association with a theatrical performer. Hilda and her daughter subsequently looked up variations of Fontes in the telephone directory, choosing the more British-sounding Fontene and adding a twist to make it Fonteyn. The following year, she took the name by which she was known for the remainder of her professional life, "Margot Fonteyn", modifying her maternal grandfather's surname, "Fontes" — in Portuguese, "fonte" means "fountain". In Middle and modern English until the 16th century, it was spelled "fonteyn". Her brother, Felix, who became a specialist of dance photography, eventually adopted the same surname.
Career
Vic-Wells years (1935–1945)
In 1935, Fonteyn had her solo debut, playing Young Tregennis in The Haunted Ballroom. That same year, Sir Frederick Ashton created the role of the bride in his choreography of Stravinsky's Le baiser de la fée specifically for her. Though he appreciated her lyric qualities and found her elegant, Ashton said of her early years that Fonteyn had brittle stubbornness and lacked polish. In spite of her perceived shortcomings, he cast her as the lead, playing the Creole girl in his production, Rio Grande. When Alicia Markova, the first Prima Ballerina of the company, left the Vic-Wells later in 1935, Fonteyn shared the lead with other members of the company, but quickly rose to the top of the field of dancers. That year, she spent her summer holidays in Paris, where she studied with the exiled Russian ballerinas Olga Preobrajenska, Mathilde Kschessinska, and Lubov Egorova. She returned for further studies with them the following summers.Using Fonteyn's delicate and somewhat feline grace to advantage, "Sir Frederick often cast her as a frail or otherworldly being". In 1936, she was cast as the unattainable muse in his Apparitions, a role which consolidated her partnership with Robert Helpmann, and the same year played a wistful, poverty-stricken flower seller in Nocturne. Her success in Nocturne marked a turning point in Ashton's perception of Fonteyn and he recognized that she could become the heir to Markova as lead dancer for the company. Shortly afterwards, the company began experimenting with televised performances, accepting paid engagements to perform for the BBC at Broadcasting House and Alexandra Palace. Fonteyn danced her first televised solo in December 1936, performing the Polka from Façade. Although the dancers enjoyed these engagements, the tiny television screens with their unsteady blue pictures meant that the medium was not yet sophisticated enough to become a lucrative avenue for the company.
The following year, Fonteyn was given the comic role of Julia in A Wedding Bouquet and was cast with Robert Helpmann performing the pas de deux, imitating Victorian ice skaters, in Ashton's Les Patineurs. Helpmann was her most constant partner in the 1930s and 1940s, helping her develop her theatricality. Decades later Fonteyn would name Helpmann as her favourite partner across the span of her career. Constant Lambert, as the company music director, assisted with her musicality. Beginning in 1935, Fonteyn and Lambert developed a romantic relationship, which would continue on and off for the duration of his life. She had previously been involved with Donald Hodson, the Controller of the BBC Overseas Service. Lambert dedicated his score for the ballet Horoscope to Fonteyn.
When the company visited the University of Cambridge for a brief professional engagement in 1937, Fonteyn first met Roberto "Tito" Arias, an 18-year-old law student from Panama who would later become her husband. Fonteyn became enamored with Arias after seeing him perform a rumba dance at a party. The pair enjoyed their time together for the next week, but Arias then returned to Panama for the summer holidays. His lack of subsequent communication left Fonteyn despondent.
By 1939 Fonteyn had performed the principal roles in Giselle, Swan Lake and The Sleeping Beauty and was appointed as the Prima Ballerina of the Vic-Wells, soon to be renamed the Sadler's Wells Ballet. Her performance in Swan Lake had been a turning point in her career, convincing critics and audiences that a British ballerina could successfully dance the lead role in a full-length classical Russian ballet. The reviewer Arnold Haskell wrote that never before had Fonteyn's performance been "so regal in manner or half so brilliant", while the writer Tangye Lean commented that she "rose to it with a stability that one had not seen in her before".
Throughout World War II, the company danced nightly, sometimes also performing matinées, to entertain troops. With such a heavy schedule, the dancers were frequently obliged to complete three to four times their usual weekly number of appearances. Fonteyn later recalled dancing so often that she sometimes "stood trembling in the wings, unable to remember if I had finished my solo before I left the stage". Wartime drafts meant that the company lost many of its male dancers to the armed forces. Shows had to be carefully chosen or edited to help ensure that an almost entirely female cast could perform all the roles. Fonteyn was often paired with young, inexperienced male dancers pulled straight from ballet schools. With short London seasons, they also travelled abroad and were in the Netherlands when it was invaded in May 1940, escaping back to England with nothing more than the costumes they were wearing. In September 1940, as the London Blitz began, the Sadler's Wells Theatre was turned into an air raid shelter. The company of dancers was temporarily displaced, touring professionally across England.
In August 1943, Fonteyn took an unexplained sick leave from the company for two months, missing their opening season performances. It was believed by many of her close friends – and her biographer, Meredith Daneman, that she underwent an abortion. Her relationship with Lambert had grown difficult, as he was drinking heavily and having affairs with other women. Concerned about her daughter's welfare, Fonteyn's mother took matters into her own hands, gently encouraging her daughter to move on from Lambert by setting her up with film director Charles Hasse. Fonteyn and Hasse became lovers, and their close relationship lasted for the next four years.
During the war, Ashton created roles such as his bleak wartime piece Dante Sonata and the glittery The Wanderer for Fonteyn. She also performed notably in Coppélia, imbuing the role with humour. The war years helped her develop stamina and improve her natural talent. In February 1944, she danced the role of the Young Girl in Le Spectre de la Rose and was coached by Russian prima ballerina Tamara Karsavina.