Margot Fonteyn

Dame Margaret Evelyn de Arias DBE (née Hookham; 18 May 191921 February 1991), known by the stage name Margot Fonteyn, was an English ballerina.Crane, Debra and Mackrell, Judith 2000. The Oxford dictionary of dance. Oxford University Press. p187/8Obituary Variety, February 25, 1991. She is widely regarded as one of the greatest classical ballet dancers of all time.

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. This is an honour rarely given to a dancer. The highest rank in the Royal Ballet today is Principal dancer. Fonteyn's appointment as a Dame commander of the British Empire is the female equivalent to a knighthood.

Fonteyn danced until 1979, when she was nearly 60. This is unusual for any dancer, male or female. Her career was expected to end round about 1960, but it was reborn by a new partnership with a Russian dancer who had escaped from the Soviet Union. He was Rudolph Nureyev, one of the three greatest male ballet dancers of the twentieth century. Though he was 19 years younger than her, the partnership flourished, and was called "the most famous partnership in ballet history".p188

She married a Panamanian politician in 1955. He survived an assassin's bullets ten years later. She continued dancing to raise money for his upkeep. The marriage was not happy; he had a mistress. However, the couple remained married until his death in 1989.

 Media 
 Film 
Several films were made of her performances.
 Various photos and early film clips 
 1955 The Sleeping Beauty: with Michael Soames (NBC, colour). A black and white version is available on DVD.
 1958 The Nutcracker: with Michael Soames
 1960 Swan Lake: a colour film of her with Rudolf Nureyev as the Prince
 2005 Margot: a documentary with filmed interviews with Nureyev, Frederick Ashton, Roland Petit, Ninette de Valois, Robert Helpmann, Lynn Seymour, and others.
 2009. Margot: BBC 4, dramatised biography with Anne-Marie Duff.

 Books 
 1976 Margot Fonteyn Autobiography New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

 References 

Category:Ballerinas
Category:British autobiographers
Category:Deaths from cancer of unknown primary origin
Category:English dancers
Category:Knights and Dames Commander of the Order of the British Empire
Category:People from Surrey
Category:1919 births
Category:1991 deaths