Margot Fonteyn: Film biography of the iconic British prima ballerina

2023年07月06日

亡くなるわずか2年前、マーゴット・フォンテインはついに自分の人生のすべてを語ることに同意した。

フォンテインはパナマの自宅で撮影され、4歳の時の最初のダンス・レッスンからキャリアを経て、人前でのパフォーマンスと世界的な賞賛の頂点に立つまでの過去を振り返った。フォンテインがこのプログラムを紹介し、彼女の人生模様を構成する仕事上および個人的な出来事を回想する。

40年以上にわたるキャリアの中で、彼女は芸術の中で最も要求の厳しいこの分野で完璧を極め、両半球の大衆を興奮させた。彼女は「バレリーナ・アソルータ」という最高の称号を授けられ、大英帝国の勲爵士となった。彼女の人生はロマンと冒険に満ち、この威厳あるバレリーナが、政治的陰謀と革命の渦中に身を置いていたとは信じがたい。

ニネット・ド・ヴァロワ、フレデリック・アシュトン、ロバート・ヘルプマン、ルドルフ・ヌレエフという、彼女のキャリアにおいて最も重要な4人の人物がプログラムに参加している。彼らの思い出が、真に非凡な人生に実体を与える。

(English)Just two years before she died, Margot Fonteyn finally agreed to tell the whole story of her life.

Fonteyn was filmed at home in Panama, where she looked back on her past from her first dancing lesson when she was four years old through her career, bringing her to the peak of public performance and world acclaim. Fonteyn presents the programme and recalls professional and personal events that made up her life's pattern.

In a more than four decades-long career, she attained perfection in this most demanding of the arts, thrilling the public in both hemispheres. She had the supreme distinction of the title 'Ballerina Assoluta' bestowed upon her and was made a Dame of the British Empire. Her life was full of romance and adventure, and it seemed incredible that this dignified ballerina should, at one time, have found herself at the centre of political intrigue and revolution.

Ninette de Valois, Frederick Ashton, Robert Helpmann and Rudolf Nureyev, the four most significant figures in her career, contribute to the programme. Their memories give substance to a truly extraordinary life.

Margot Fonteyn: Film biography of the iconic British prima ballerina

Now that I no longer dance, I lived here with my husband on this farm in Panama when I was dancing. My career was undoubtedly very long. It was 45 years as a professional dancer from shortly before my 15th birthday, but to go right back to the very beginning, the first house that I can remember was in the London suburb of Ealing, and there we were a happy ordinary little family of four with my father mother and my brother Felix three years older than me nobody can remember why it was suddenly decided when I was about four and a half that I should go to dancing class but for whatever reason, I can well remember still the morning.

When my mother and I left our little front gate, instead of turning to the left and down the hill towards the shops with me hop-skipping along beside her as usual, we turned to the right and then to the request again. After a short distance, we went to our house and opened the front door. There it said miss grace versus Teacher of Dancing. It couldn't have been a better choice.

Because she was the ideal children's teacher, always pleasant, encouraging, patient, and a very, very good teacher, so that was my first significant piece of luck in my ballet career anyway; miss faster accepted me as her pupil, and my mother bought my first pair of dancing shoes.

Now surprisingly enough, I happen to have them right here and, um, I find them rather sweet I don't know why it was that my mother kept one of these little slippers and miss persister kept the other until when she died, they came back to us, and here they are my first dancing shoes.

I must have been about six when one day, my mother took me to London to a matinee performance of the most excellent dancer in the world, anna pavlova. She was dancing the fairy doll first.

Well, I'm ashamed to admit that instead of being bowled over by ana pavlova and filled with ambition to be just like her at the grand age of six with a few dancing lessons behind me, I thought that I could do pretty well, too and especially in my favourite dance the Irish washerwoman's jig I was eight when this happy family existence came to an end.

Because my father accepted a position with the British American tobacco company to be a chief engineer for the whole China division overseeing all their factories there for a variety of reasons, things that happened later on, and we were never again to live together as a family of four, it was on 5th November in 1927 that we sailed from Liverpool across the Atlantic from new york.

And America was so incredibly different to England. There were these skyscrapers in new york and the traffic driving on the other side of the road. Finally, we arrived in Shanghai, and the ship moored up midstream of the Wangpu River opposite the famous Shanghai waterfront. The bund must have been early, probably about May in 1928, and even now, the band is almost unchanged; life in Shanghai was tremendous, exciting and different.

For one thing, there was a bustle of streets with people everywhere and little shops with strange things. Then there were the rickshaws. In those days, one went around by rickshaws pulled by coolies.

There were no bicycles then, but my mother had always loved taking me to dancing class, so she quickly looked for another dancing teacher. She found this English teacher called Audrey King.

I remember when Margo's mother brought Margot to me. I think she was about eight or nine. She was a timid little girl. She worked very hard all the time. I felt her potential was good because she could always take a perfect "fifth position" from the first lesson. She had lovely straight legs and a beautiful arabesque line from the beginning. She was different from the other little girls who only learned dancing because their mother thought it would do them good and just for fun.

Margot was always serious about what she was doing. Perhaps it is a part of "her character" to try and do everything to the best of her ability in Shanghai; of course, it was possible to learn all types of dancing. And I know that Margot's mother felt that Margot would be a perfect character dancer.

What did me well during our years in Shanghai? My formal education took place in the cathedral school for Girls, the most British institution you could imagine, and now it's a school for the performing arts. This was once the beautifully manicured playing field.

And here is the staircase that used to lead up to the office of our real dragon, a headmistress, miss fleet. She terrified the pupils and the parents alike. The oak woodwork is still here, and the classrooms are just as I remember them. Here was the assembly hall, which, to my surprise, is now a ballet studio with bars and mirrors.

I was pretty fair at school but quite hopeless at games and hated games. I loved swimming and enjoyed dancing, but it wasn't that important, but I did enjoy it. I went to various teachers who seemed to think I had talent.

Well, my mother more cautiously thought of big fish in a small pond that's not so difficult to assess accurately. She would have to take me to London, so I was 14, and it was decided I should leave school. I'll never forget the last day of term. I went to say goodbye to the dragon miss fleet, and suddenly, I wasn't frightened of her anymore. I went to her office and said, well, I'm leaving.

I've come to say goodbye, and she was charming she's; of course, she took a very dim view of me leaving school at that age, but gently she said, you know you'll regret it this all your life because you'll find yourself an ignoramus among other people and indeed, very often, I have. Early in 1934, my mother and I arrived in London.

She brought me to the pheasantry in the King's Road Chelsea, where princess seraphine Estafieva, a famous ballerina from imperial Russia, had her dancing school. She was the most outstanding teacher.

I just loved her. Previously I had. I wouldn't say I liked ballet dancing very much because it was stiff, rigid, and frankly dull. I wanted something where I banged a tambourine and stamped about in heeled shoes.

I loved that kind of thing, rhythm and movement and everything, but Princess Estafieva brought all this exciting movement music to Bali. She made all the steps seem very easy.

She was an excellent teacher, but with the typical egoism of youth, I didn't stop to think of my mother's particular problem, which was should she stay with her in London and try to advance with my dancing or if I wasn't worth it and didn't have any talent we would go back to shanghai and continue our life there so my mother felt.

She was fine in a dancing school but had to get an accurate assessment. She took me to audition at the Sadler's World's Theater, which was the school for the then vice will's ballet young company, which much later became Britain's royal ballet and its founder and inspired director for many years was nineteen devaluers the presiding genius of British valley.

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It must be just 60 years ago when I was sitting in this room watching a class of very young students. My eye rolled around the room, and a little girl suddenly arrested me. I turned to the teacher and asked who the little girl on the left was. She told me she was Peggy Hookman, known today as Margaret Fontaine, as they called her in those days.

She was a delighted little girl, not at all engrossed in being a great ballerina. Her ambition was to tap dance and be a character dancer. This ambition, to my horror, was encouraged by the mother until I tried to explain to her that something quite out of the ordinary had entered the ranks of the sad world's children's school. She was no character dancer, no tap dancer, but a coming great ballerina.

Her encounter with Frederick Ashton at the beginning was also rather amusing. I told him about her. He looked at her. He said he wasn't quite sure. They got together in a bit of dance he was arranging for four girls, and after it was over, Margot went back for lunch with Mother. She told her mother I don't understand that man's choreography, but time very quickly cured all those tiny differences from then on; they inspired each other it's lovely to think it all happened here at the very beginning of the settler's wells valley.

11)

The Meijer Lafayette was the first completely new ballet that I ever danced in. The solo that Frederick Ashton arranged for me has always remained in my memory, although the rest of the valley is long since forgotten. Recently, I taught that dance to Nicola's track, and she is dancing on the same stage on which it was first performed in 1935.

I was 16 at the time. How lucky I was that so many of the ballets were choreographed by that genius frederick ashton. I suppose the first time I ever came in contact with Margot Fontaine must have been in 1933 or 34, and it was during a rehearsal of a battle I had just stood for. Sadler's was the rendezvous, and I think she was replacing somebody.

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I found her, yeah, I didn't get on with her, and I found her inadequate in what she was doing. Also, she seemed to have a superior attitude, which didn't appeal to me, and I sensed a streak of stubbornness. So, I mean, anyway, they had the rehearsal finished.

Thee I worked with her seriously was in the part of the bride and desert Lafayette where there again she had a challenging variation to do, which required a massive attack and sharpness in her dancing which Margaret at that time didn't have. Instead, she said to you that your feet are somewhat buttery.

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Instead of being too soft, they didn't have that edge in them, so I bullied them and a bullet. Then finally, she burst into tears, rushed up, put her arms around me, and said I'm sorry, but I'm trying my best. I can't do any more, so then I realized that she'd conceded to me and that from then on we would be able to work together, which indeed we did very happy when I look back, those were wonderful years in the 30s at Saddle swells theatre it wasn't long after I joined that the prima ballerina Alicia Markova left the company.

And that gave tremendous opportunities to us more junior dancers then we had this superb musical director constant lambert, and the principal dancer was Robert Helpmann who was a man of the theatre if ever there was, I mean, if he was on the stage, nobody was going to look at me frankly, So this was the best training I could have had to become a real artist of the belly, not just a dancer. This amateur film of Giselle, in which I'm Dancing with Robert Helpmann, was taken during a performance at saddle-swills theatre in 1937.

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Our partnership was perhaps one of the most extraordinary experiences in my life because I danced with Fontaine for 25 years. I don't suppose I ever spoke to her outside the rehearsal room or the dressing room for the first nine or ten of those years. Good night, what time's the rehearsal in the morning? Still, I never spoke to her. I think it was because I thought she was standoffish, and she felt I was. We never bothered to inquire whether we would stand official, and then I remember very clearly one day walking down the street, and I looked at her and said something, and she laughed.

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And I remember thinking my goodness, she's a great intimate close friend, and this is how it remained for the rest of our association. Our little company used to dance every year in May in Cambridge, which coincided with the undergraduate final examinations. Still, despite that, they somehow managed to entertain us in an almost continuous floating party which moved from one location to another but never seemed to die down for the whole week entirely. It was in Cambridge in 1937 that I fell suddenly and instantly in love. It happened in that room up there which was the living room of the digs that I was sharing with my closest friends in the ballet Pamela May.

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And Juneberry, one evening, I returned to find that the party had settled temporarily in our rooms. There were quite a few people there already, and the lights were dim in the middle of the space; two dark-haired young men were dancing. They were dancing the rumba, which was practically unknown in England then. I was fascinated by the younger of the two men, and I watched him for the whole rest of the evening. The following day, something happened that was very strange.

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Indeed I've never quite been able to explain it. I got out of bed. I walked across the room, but somehow, my feet didn't seem to touch the ground, so I returned. I sat on the edge of the bed to think about it. Suddenly I remembered this dark-haired young man dancing the rumble. I found out that his name was Tito. This is a snapshot of Tito that was taken across the river on the grass of the bank. I carried that with me everywhere for years. I can remember walking with him here by the river banks and punting. Still, somehow we were always with a group of people.

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We weren't very alone. He did manage to tell me that his father was the president of Panama, and sometimes he would talk to me a little bit about his life in his own country. We met each summer the two following years until 1939, when he had already graduated from Cambridge and world war ii broke out that year in September, and I didn't see it again for 14 years. The ballet continued to dance in Cambridge, but without Tito, the place had lost its magic for me.

When the war broke out, the government closed all theatres immediately, and the company was disbanded, nobody knowing what to expect. After two weeks, the ballet was recalled to dance for the troops in army camps around the country without the usual orchestra we were accustomed to. Still, with two pianos as accompaniment, not surprisingly, a ballet company wasn't exactly what the troops were hoping to see, and quite often, they would get up and bang their seats noisily as they walked out of the theatre well.

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We didn't care at all. We were so happy to be dancing again, and what did it matter? In any case, very soon, we were back again dancing in actual theatres in the cities in the theatres in front of the conductor and just in front of the footlights, sir, there would be a sign. It would light up, saying afraid alert so all the public could see it, and then after a time, it would display all clear well. In the intervening period, one would sometimes hear the bomber's German bomber coming over.

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And a bomb would drop voom somewhere or other like that. When you finished your dance and ran off the stage, you said where it fell and what it hit and if it was in London they might say one of the famous wren churches or something like that had been shot. Still, the curious thing is that I never heard of anybody being seen getting up and leaving the theatre because there was an air raid on.

They sat there watching the performance we continued. Everything went on as usual. People thought that was quite normal. I believe Fredric Ashton's was one of our favourite ballets. We must have danced at least three times a week for five years. The war in Europe was over in 1945.

And the following year, it was decided that the royal opera house in London should have its opera and ballet companies. For the first time in its history, the little Sadler's Wells ballet moved over to the big opera house, and this was, of course, a significant advance in the fortunes of our company. I was very nervous because this was a vast stage, and I rarely danced on a stage that size.

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And I was worried about whether I could project into this big auditorium. This magnificent new production of sleeping beauty, designed by Oliver Messel, opened its first season there. It was wonderful. The colours and everything were so wonderful, and this opening night with the beautiful opera house all done up. The royal family watched the performance; it was a lovely occasion.

It was the same magnificent production that brought us unimaginable success when we danced for the first time in America in October 1949 at the old metropolitan opera house in new york, and that certainly was an occasion never to be forgotten for me. I mean, I was terrified. I had this long attack of stage fright which lasted for three months, and journalists tried to interview me in new york.

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When we arrived, there found me mute I was so right. I couldn't say anything. I was so sure of failure I thought this would be terrible, and I would let the whole company devolve. It's going to be a dreadful thing. I was convinced that this was going to happen. It wasn't perfect. I remember the first night in new york; I went to see her dressing in her dressing room.

And it was the first time I'd seen her at all nervous, and I said now, you mustn't be worried; this is very important. She said I'm not concerned for me; I'm anxious about the reputation of the British ballet, and I watched her make her first entrance. I've never heard such applause in my life. It was like a colossal gun.

She came to the famous rose adagio where the princess balances on the hand of all the princes, and when she went to the third prince, she'd caught such a miraculous balance that she didn't even take his hand. She just smiled at him.

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I thought the audience would explode from the moment she came on stage. Everybody was just in love because apart from her greatness as a dancer, her musicality, and her dramatic sense, there was just her unbelievable lovability everybody loved her from the moment she appeared from behind the colonnades in act one, sleeping beauty through her final curtain calls no matter what she was dancing she was just overwhelming I have to confess. I never actually told this to Margot years later when we became friends.

She is the only performer in my 40-odd years of going to various kinds of plays, operas, ballets etc., whom I ever stood outside on the street outside of a stage door to catch sight of.

It would never have occurred to me to intrude upon her for her autograph but to look at her in real life after the thrill of seeing her on stage was something I had to do. New York, for me, is always a city of beauty and excitement. Over the years, the city has brought me great happiness and success. During that first visit, I was still totally unsophisticated.

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And shy, somehow, I couldn't believe I could have become a big star overnight. It seemed so strange, and finally, two things did impress me and made me realize that something had changed completely. The first was when the magazines Time and Newsweek both came out. In addition to my picture on the cover, I thought that only happened to heads of state or something.

I was dumbfounded by it, and perhaps even more impressive was when one day, Robert Helpmann took me to see his great friend Catherine Hepburn. Of course, I thought I stood on the doorstep there with Bobby as he rang the bell, and I thought I was going to meet this excellent star, and what would I be able to say to her or something like that? I was like a little girl there.

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And suddenly Catherine happened herself open the door and meet you, and I thought, no, it's the other way around, I'm nobody. Afterwards, I thought about that a lot, and so gradually, I came to accept that I was somebody, yet it's funny to think that.

I was already 30 years old, but I still had no real sense of my identity unless I was in the ballet on the stage, leaving the stage door. As long as it was Bally, I knew who I was. On our third new york season, I was sitting in my dressing room putting on my makeup for sleeping beauty again, and the stage doorman knocked at the door. He came in and said a gentleman just left his card for you.

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Dr Roberto e Arias, ambassador for Panama to the united nations, suddenly knocked on the door, and in came Tito with a friend; he sat down in the city as usual, not saying much. He just stared at me. He left, saying he would telephone me the following day.

He did indeed telephone the following day. It was relatively early; he said in his quiet mumbling, I'm afraid I must return to Panama. Unexpectedly, my plane leaves at midday, so I ordered some breakfast and will come around in 20 minutes. Well, that threw me off a bit because I wasn't used to waking up early in the morning anyway, but I ordered the breakfast, of course, and around came Tito, and he sat cross-legged on the floor of my room as he used to do when I was in my dressing room in Cambridge and it transpired that.

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Of course, he was married and had three children, so we gossiped a little about this. That and the old days and people he knew in Cambridge. Suddenly he said you'd marry me and be very happy. I was puzzled by this whole thing of Tito because it was tough for me to recognize in this rather fat person, um, the Tito that I had known as a very slim boy in Cambridge. Still, he would keep appearing in all the cities where we were dancing, suddenly turn up in Philadelphia that he'd turn up in Boston or something like this, but still, I just wanted to get alone and away and have time to think.

Because I was working very hard and I wanted to have some time to think about this matter, we were married in Paris in February 1955 at the Panamanian council. Now the office was tiny, and we hadn't invited close even some close friends. Still, when. Still, the room was packed with people, masses, cameras, and movies. Everything is in a massive battery behind the console. General Max automates, who was marrying us, and my parent. I couldn't get near to us. It was an awful mess, but we had a beautiful reception afterwards.

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And we went off for a honeymoon in the Bahamas. When we got back to London two weeks later, um, Tito became Panama's ambassador to the Court of st james, so suddenly there I was with an embassy instead of a little flat I'd been living in before with all these diplomatic duties at the same time trying to get to my classes my rehearsals and did the performances. Then we would entertain supper after the performance. It was challenging but extraordinary for the first time in my life.

I knew who I was. Tito specialized in maritime law. One of his clients was Aristotle or Nasus, meaning we were frequently entertained on Onassis's yacht, the Christina. I took this film myself. The most memorable occasion was a cruise with sir winston and Lady Churchill on board, and being close to these two great people was so thrilling.

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Onassis was very fond of his daughter, Christina maria kallis was on the yacht with us. Onassis was always in perfect humour. He was an excellent host.

About two years after we were married, Tito talked about the revolution he wanted to make in Panama. It seemed that there were specific changes that he felt his country needed anyway.

Of course, he had to resign as ambassador before going to Panama, and I was on a longish Australian tour. When it finished, it was my holiday from the valley. Tito telephoned and said; please meet me at the yacht club in the canal zone.

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So I waited for her,e and after a while, every calmly strolling down came Tito, and we boarded a little launch called the Nola; we went out to see, and this was the beginning of five sorts of absolutely idyllic days when we were sailing around these islands, but it was also interspersed with meeting up with a shrimp boat.

I'm glad now that my camera reminds me of those strange days. Some of the arms had arrived in Panama in the false bottom of a small dinghy; this dinghy was being towed when due to the weight of the components, it sank now it sank in shark-infested waters, and everybody was in a bit of a stir until a splendid captain we had said, I don't mind sharks at all.

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And he dived in, and he got the thing up, and they broke open the bottom of this shrimp boat. They unpacked all these guns, ammunition, and things stacked on the deck.

Still, one morning, the shrimp boat and our little launch were together in a tiny cove on one of these islands. Very early, a plane circled. That was the police plane, and they had discovered us, and I said, what will happen if you return to Panama? So he said I'd be arrested, and Tito clambered aboard the shrimp boat.

And in what seemed no time at all, this little thing was a speck in the distance. He'd said he would try to get to costa rica, which is the following country department, but if we were to go back to Panama, Tito said, please go slowly as a decoy so they won't know which ship of the two, he would be in and what was unnerving was that for a lot of the time, there was one of these planes was circling up in the sky watching us.

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And I found that very discomforting anyway. Finally, we got back sort evening to the yacht club, and I stepped out onto the pier, not a soul in sight, nobody waiting to arrest me. Everything was fine, but later that night, I went across the family, and then I was staying with some friends, and after that night, I was woken up and had just gone to bed, and the hostess came and knocked on the door.

They want to take your police want to take your questioning so I got up. There I got into the car with max automate, who, two years before, had been the consul general in Paris. He was distraught because he had to take me to the police station, and this tremendous big door opened, and I went in.

The door rattled behind me, and then I was there waiting for questioning, so they took me to what seemed like a sort of VIP cell. It was upstairs on the first floor something had a little private bathroom on the side.

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and there was a bed, and on the bedside table was a bowl with some roses in it, and this lieutenant said, oh, the governor of the jail put the roses. He grows them himself and orders them to be put in your room, so everything is very nice, except he locks the door when he goes up.

Finally, they did ask me these questions. I said as little as I could about who any of the other people were, and then they took me a bit later into a car straight from jail, and I was deported with a ticket to Miami.

And there I was from Miami. I took a plane to new york; when I arrived there, it was the most incredible thing all these press were at the bottom of the steps down from the helicopter, a tremendous horde of people and cameras and everything. When I stepped out and went down, I thought, well, I really ought to enjoy this.

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How many times does it happen to an ordinary citizen? If you're a head of state or something like this, but this will never happen to me again, I went down the steps, and they had a press conference in the airport. What are you trying to get me to say precisely? Why don't you tell me what you want me to say? I'll tell you if I say it because you're fishing around something, and I can't quite get the gist. Someone gave rise to war. I presume that something has happened in Panama in the last ten days.

Among other things, I was in prison. Did you care about all those things? I am not going to say anything. Then, one afternoon, a friend from one of the press agencies telephoned to say he had just heard that Tito had taken asylum in the Brazilian embassy in Panama, which was a tremendous relief.

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and it was about four weeks later that he was allowed to travel down to Brazil. Of course, I rushed down immediately. We were reunited at the airport in Rio de Janeiro.

After a couple of weeks' holiday, we returned to London, where I was to prepare for the next ballet season—that season brought me my favourite of all roles in the ballet Ondine. It was a three-act valley by Frederick Ashton. My part was that of a water nymph that fitted me like a glove. I loved her in on Dean because it somehow seemed to play a full role in finally creating herself.

It wasn't like the lactose; she is a role taken on after hundreds of people have done it. This was her creation. I mean, she was particularly marvellous, and when she comes to life, and she sees her shadow for the first time, all that was incredibly indicated and completely convincing, which had this extraordinary quality of being in 1961, our company went dancing in Russia as part of an exchange visit between the Kirov ballet from Leningrad. The Kirov theatre used to be the famous Mariinsky imperial theatre, so when I came to dance to sleeping beauty on that hallowed stage, I was so frightened and nervous.

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Then there would be all these old Russian dancers and teachers and people in the audience, and I'm always terribly self-conscious when I know that there's somebody very distinguished in my profession sitting watching me I suddenly, I have two left feet and steps that I can always do ideally fail it's just terrible.

So I'm afraid I dance pretty severely in sleeping beauty, at least it seems so. Still, fortunately, I had in the repertoire online and this new belly they loved, So that restored my confidence a bit. Still, generally, I would say in Leningrad and Moscow, where did the sleeping beauty reappear?

37)

I don't think that I danced my best on that Russian tour which I'm sorry, it's the only time I've ever danced in Russia. While we were in Leningrad, the rumours came that one of the Kirov Bali's best dancers had defected as he would arrive in London for their season at the opera house. It was all calm and hush-hush. When we returned to London, we learned he was one of the young, most brilliant dancers they had.

His name was Rudolf Nureyev. He was 23 years old and by then dancing with a company in Paris now Michael Soames, with whom I had been dancing for the last ten years ever since Robert Helpmann had left the company had decided to retire after the Russian visit a lot of people thought even if they didn't say so that at 42 it would be quite a good idea if I did the same.

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And probably would have done it if it hadn't been that Ninetydevelopa invited Nora to dance with Giselle at the opera house. It would have been 1962 in February, a few months later.

Would you like to dance it with him? She offered it to me first, as it were, and I immediately thought he was 23 i'm42 that would be like mutton dancing with lamb. I thought it wasn't perfect, so I said, well, I would like to think about it, and I did think about it, and I suddenly thought, well, he's going to be the big sensation all this season.

Because everybody will rush to the notified performances, in retrospect, I believe that our partnership wouldn't have been such a great success were it not for the difference in our ages because what happened was that I would go out on the stage thinking, who is going to look at me with this young lion leaping 10 feet high in the air and doing all these fantastic things. Then Rudolph had deep respect.

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Because I was this older, very famous, established ballerina, and he felt a bit well when I was on the stage behind her who was going to look at me, so it charged the performance that we were both going out there inspired egged on as it were by the other one and also with absolutely the same objective about what this performance should produce. Somehow it just worked after the first two rehearsals of Gisele Margot started to trust me, and things went very smoothly.

And every rehearsal was like a performance. I remember Cordoba people crying during the trial, tears running down their cheeks. Those performances of Giselle became a historical event. Then Margot asked me to do swan lake with her. I flew in from Denmark, sat in Madame's box, and watched the first act.

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And I suddenly saw an extraordinary thing in the first act, when Prince meets Odette, they have a mime they start gesticulating. I did. I wasn't trained like that in Russia.

It was a great shock to me, and I came to her, and I said, well, he was so beautiful, and that you did mime so well, but I couldn't find a place for myself.

Then, however, I agreed to dance with him at swan lake. I couldn't refuse, and we started to work; it wasn't as smooth as Giselle's. We had a lot of arguments and differences, and suddenly, she told me one moment that her first lake was in 1938, which was my birthday.

41)

So I started to laugh, but we worked out a version. When we went on stage, all differences and all arguments were forgotten. We became one body, one soul.

We moved in one way where it was very complimentary., Every arm movement of every head movement. There were no more cultural gaps or age differences. We've been absorbed in characterization; we became part of it, and the public was enthralled.

I think only because we were enthralled with each other and what we did with the role first thing she taught me was outstanding professionalism. The way she worked, her work is comprehensive, but she gets out, do it well, and has a good time. Don't linger. Get on with it. It was fortunate for us to have those glorious years.

She became a very, very great friend of mine. To me, she's a part of my family. That's all I have; only her in 1964 Tito's in my life changed dramatically.

42)

I had no idea until I reached his bedside of the terrible gravity of the situation. The doctor said that a bullet had lodged against his spine. And they couldn't be sure whether this might cause paralysis, so I was by his bedside as much as I could after three days when the doctor examined him.

I saw that he shook his head, and I thought, that seems terrible news. Of course, at that point, all the doctor's people in the hospital knew that, most likely, this spinal injury would be for life, and he would be paralyzed. That was something I suppose wasn't prepared an idea that I wasn't ready to accept then.

43)

So I didn't believe it. In fact, for months, I didn't believe it until I was able to face the idea but uh, as soon as possible, the doctors in Panama thought it best to send him to the best rehabilitation hospital, which is in England at Stoke Mandeville so he was sent on the plane with a doctrine and nurse and all kinds of people with him. He arrived at Stoke Mandeville, and they would look after him exceedingly.

There so, I felt reassured by that, but unfortunately, I couldn't cancel all my engagements. It wasn't a time that I could suddenly just cut everything, and I had to leave two days after his arrival. I had to leave for the Spaletto festival in Italy. I went off heavy-hearted with my mother after we'd been in palette two days early in the morning.

44)

There was a telephone call from the hospital for me to return immediately. Of course, my heart sank entirely, but I still arrived back in London at the airport. Our chauffeur was there to meet us. I asked how it is he said well, the last radio bulletin said he was still alive, but he was in a coma again, so silly to cry. However, I was still so affected by it that when I got there, he was in a coma and remained there for three days. We were watching. The doctors hadn't any idea how he would be if he came out of it because they said that he had had a temperature of 108 which doesn't exist on the thermometer.

45)

And so they had never seen somebody survive this they didn't know how he might come out of it but obviously they expected his brain would be affected so slowly he came back to consciousness she but his speech also was concerned it was tough to understand the doctor said does he appear to be as he was before I said well yes I think so and extraordinary miracle of miracles. However, he was paralyzed and couldn't speak very little, only with a whisper. His brain returned utterly brilliant as it always was his memory and everything, and that is the final that is the most important thing about a person: their brain.

46)

and there was Tito, in a way, not changed at all. Miss Bromley was the chief physiotherapist and head of the rehabilitation department when Tito arrived at Stoke Mandeville. He stayed there for two years, so she saw his condition then. When such a patient with significant disabilities returns home, the families have to make many adjustments; for example, someone has to get up every night and turn the patient once at least and maybe two or three times, but its concentration has to shift from disability to ability gradually.

And the fact that Tito, after nearly 25 years, is so fit and able to manage his farm and travel all over the world is due mainly, I'm sure, to his indomitable spirit and Margot's constant care Tito had been shot at the end of an election campaign and as anyone in politics knows very well movements clean everybody right out of money so that wasn't a time.

47)

When I could even consider dropping my career, um, he had been in the hospital continuously in the ballet kenneth macmillan choreographed Romeo and Juliet, in which I was to dance, and this was yet another of the great choreographers that I had a chance to work with it was beautiful really because by that time we were able to persuade the doctors to let tito go by ambulance up to the royal opera house and to watch the performance. You can imagine my emotion when I was dancing there in his first performance, and Tito was sitting in his wheelchair in the box watching. Well, for a variety of different reasons. It turned out that I went on dancing for quite several years.

And all this time, I was very conscious that once I would drop the most challenging ballet from my repertoire, uh, my stamina level would drop accordingly, and then the next pound, so we'll go all the way down the line, so I was very anxious to keep dancing the difficult things as long as I could and the ballet that I had always found very very exacting the most exacting tiring and difficult altogether, in fact, the only ballet three-act ballad.

I had never felt able, if necessary, to dance twice on the same day, and that was Swanley on my 60th birthday. There was a gala at the royal opera house to celebrate my retirement. This Frederick Ashton choreographed, especially a little dance still within my powers.

48)

And he joined me on the stage in the last few bars of the Music, and we walked off arm-in-arm together. That was the first and final performance of that dance. It was called Salud a Kiss by Frederick Ashton, the most outstanding choreographer of our time.

Now that my dancing days were over, it was natural to expect that the significant spectacular events in my life were also at an end, and out of the blue came an invitation to be chancellor of the University of Durham in England, the installation of my installation took place in Durham cathedral one of the most beautiful in England. As I made my entry at the head of my procession, which was the last of four caravans, trumpets played a fanfare written primarily in my honour by the authority of the university I confer on you the degree of doctor of science honoris causa.

49)

Tito had always wanted a cattle farm, and now that, at last, I was free to live with him, we bought this farm in Panama, and here we built our own little house. This is the one I'm saying other to that is this one of our own homes produce this one yeah bread here that's a Zimbra for sure that one with a white face this baby one with white face and white eyelashes it's a question of weeding out to get to finally to get a very high quality of mother you treat me so that's the story of my life so far.

I can't help thinking that when that little girl walked a few hundred yards to her first dancing class, she couldn't have thought about what a long journey she was embarking on.

Margot Fonteyn: Film biography of the iconic British prima ballerina

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_txUrePvK00&t=122s

Just two years before she died, Margot Fonteyn finally agreed to tell the whole story of her life.

Rudolf Khametovich Nureyev, 54 (17th March 1938 - 6th January 1993), was a Soviet ballet dancer and choreographer. He was director of the Paris Opera Ballet from 1983 to 1989 and its chief choreographer until October 1992. Named Lord of the Dance, Nureyev is regarded as one of ballet's most gifted male dancers. He died of AIDS.

The half-life of Rudolf Nureyev, an unparalleled genius dancer / Trailer of the movie "White Crow Legendary Dancer."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cknuj-cDf1Y

"White Crow: The Legendary Dancer" is a film adaptation of Rudolf Nureyev, an unparalleled genius dancer of the century, directed by and starring the famous actor Ralph Fiennes.

Director Ralph Fiennes, a highly acclaimed actor, has been planning for 20 years, and the latest work will be released. It depicts the passion of Rudolf Nureyev, a legendary dancer who is said to have changed the history of ballet, and the courage to make the ultimate decision when danger is imminent.

The trailer video lifted this time shows the charm of this work, which expresses the overwhelming reality based on careful research, from the young days of the "legendary dancer" Rudolf Nureyev to "Decision Day" in Paris. Is condensed.

—I want to dance. With that in mind, Nureyev tries to interact with foreign dancers and absorb everything he touches, even if it is prohibited and the government that puts pressure on him. What is the decision he put his life on the line while being harassed—!?

Margot Fonteyn: Film biography of the iconic British prima ballerina

Margot Fonteyn: Film biography of the iconic British prima ballerina

Margot Fonteyn: Film biography of the iconic British prima ballerina

[Promotion video] Royal Ballet "Romeo and Juliet"

Royal Ballet – Margot Fonteyn, A Celebration – London

Spoiler synopsis and impressions of the movie "White Crow Legendary Dancer".

Rudolf Nureyev, 54, (1938-1993) Soviet Ballet dancer

The half-life of Rudolf Nureyev, an unparalleled genius dancer / Trailer of the movie "White Crow Legendary Dancer."

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