It was after Markova left Sadler’s Wells to form her own company in association with Dolin that Fonteyn began to come into her own. Ninette de Valois had a plan, to which, like all her plans, she adhered. She had been grooming Fonteyn to take Markova’s place. The fact that she has done so is a matter of history, record, and fact. This is not the place for a catalogue of Fonteyn’s roles, or a list of her individual triumphs. Margot Fonteyn is very much with us, before us, among us, at the height of her powers. She speaks for herself. I merely want to give the reader enough background so that he may know the basic elements which have gone into the making of Margot Fonteyn, prima ballerina assoluta.
As a dancer, I find her appeal to me is two-fold: first as a pure classical dancer; second as an actress-dancer, by which I mean a dancer with a fine ability to characterize. This is important, for it implies few, if any, limitations. Pavlova, as I have pointed out, was free from limitations in the same way and, I think, to a similar degree. Anna Pavlova had a wide variety: she was a superb dramatic dancer in Giselle; she was equally at home in the brittle, glamorous Fairy Doll; as the light-hearted protagonist of the Rondino; as the bright-colored flirt of the Tchaikowsky Christmas. Tamara Karsavina ranged the gamut from Carnaval, Les Sylphides, and Pavillon d’Armide, on the one hand, to Schéhérazade, Thamar, and the Miller’s Wife in The Three-Cornered Hat, on the other, doing all with equal skill and artistry. In the same way, Fonteyn ranges, with equal perfection from the Princess Aurora of The Sleeping Beauty, the title role of Cinderella, and Mam’zelle Angot, the Millers wife in The Three-Cornered Hat, the tragic Giselle, Swanilda in Coppélia, the peasant Dulcinia in Don Quixote, on the one hand, to the pure, abstract dancing appeal of her lyrical roles in ballets such as Symphonic Variations, Scènes de Ballet, Ballet Imperial, and Dante Sonata, on the other.
As a dancer, Fonteyn is freer of mannerisms than any other ballerina I have known, devoid of tricks and those stunts sometimes called “showmanship” that are so often mere vulgar lapses from taste. About everything she does there is a strange combination of purity of style with a striking individuality that I can only identify and explain by that overworked term, “personality.” She has a superb carriage, the taut back of the perfect dancer, the faultless line and the ankles of the true ballerina. Over all is a great suppleness: the sort of suppleness that can make even an unexpected fall a thing of beauty. For ballerinas sometimes fall, even as ordinary mortals. One such fall occurred on Fonteyn’s first entrance in the nation’s capital, before a gala audience at the Washington première of Sadler’s Wells, with an audience that included President Truman, Sir Oliver Franks, and the entire diplomatic corps.
The cramped, ill-suited platform of Constitution Hall, was an inadequate, makeshift excuse for a stage. As Fonteyn entered to the resounding applause of thousands, she slipped on a loose board and fell, but gracefully and with such beauty that those in the audience who did not know might easily have thought it was a part of the choreographer’s design.
On the company’s return to London, at the close of the tour, the entire personnel were the guests at a formal dinner tendered to them by H. M. Government. The late Sir Stafford Cripps, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, gave the first toast to Fonteyn. Turning to her, Sir Stafford, in proposing the toast, said: “My dear lady, it has been brought to my attention that, in making your first entry into the American capital, you fell flat on your face.”
The Chancellor paused for an instant as he eyed her in mock severity, then added: “I beg you not to take it too much to heart. It is not the first time, nor, I feel sure, will it be the last, when your countrymen will be obliged to assume that same prostrate position on entering that city.”
To sum up my impressions of Fonteyn, the dancer, I should be
Angus McBean
Sadler’s Wells Ballet: Frederick Ashton, Ninette de Valois, Leonide Massine