Margot Fonteyn

Take heart: If you are cast as a mere snowflake in The Nutcracker, there still might be great things ahead of you – at least this was true for Margot Fonteyn. The English ballerina was born as Margaret Hookham in 1919, and spent six years living in Shanghai where her father was working. At 14, Fonteyn’s mother brought her to London to further her dance studies. She entered the Sadler’s Wells Ballet school in 1934, appearing that year in The Nutcracker. By the end of the following year, she had become a prima ballerina of the Vic-Wells Ballet. Signature roles followed, including Aurora in The Sleeping Beauty, Agathe in Les Demoiselles de la Nuit, Cinderella, Giselle, Sylvia, and for Sir Frederick Ashton, Apparitions, Les Patineurs, A Wedding Banquet, Symphonic Variations, and Ondine. In 1956, she became Dame Margot Fonteyn of the British Empire. The previous year she had married Roberto Arias, son of the former Panamanian president and Panama’s ambassador in London. (In 1965, he was paralyzed in an assassination attempt.) In 1961, Fonteyn decided to postpone retirement to dance with Rudolf Nureyev for a charity benefit. Although she was known for her achievements in the pas de deux, the coupling with Nureyev created a new passion for ballet performances. They continued to give special performances, as well as dance together in new ballets. Fonteyn gave her final performance when she was sixty years old (!) in London’s Royal Opera House. She had already received the highest ranking in ballet as the prima ballerina assoluta of the Royal Ballet. From 1981 until her death in 1991, Fonteyn taught young dancers the roles she had performed with such beauty, grace, and physicality throughout her career. One of her quotes to live by: “Take your work seriously, but never yourself.”