Margot Fonteyn is, to me, the true artist, because a great dancer must be a human being before she is an artist; her art must, in the last resort, be the expression of her personal attitude to life. She is many-sided; and the wonder is that she is able to have this breadth of cultural outlook when so much of her time has had to be spent in acquiring technique, dealing with its problems and the means of expression.
No amount of technique, no amount of technical brilliance or recondite knowledge will hide the paucity of emotion or intellect in an artist’s make-up. Technique, after all, is no more than the alphabet and the words of an art, and it is only the difficulty of acquiring a superlative technique that has led so many astray. But along what a fatal path they have been led! How often are we told that the true artist must devote her whole energies to her art, without the realization that art is the highest expression of mankind and has value only in so far as it is enriched with the blood of life.
As for Fonteyn, the person, whom I love and admire, I have no gossip to offer, few anecdotes, no whisperings. About her there is not the slightest trace of pose, pretentiousness, or pettiness. While she is conscious she is a great ballerina, one of the top-ranking artists in any art in the world today, she is equally conscious she is a human being. Basically, she is shy and quite humble. Splendidly poised, immaculately and impeccably groomed, chic in an international rather than in a Parisian sense, she is definitely an elegant person. The elegance of her private appearance she carries over into her appearance as a ballerina. Anna Pavlova, of all other dancers I have known, had this same quality.
Usually Margot dresses in colors that are on the dark side, like her own personal coloring. Small-featured, small-boned, her clothes, exquisite in cut, are strikingly simple. She is not given to jewelry, save for earrings without which I cannot remember ever having seen her. She is remarkably beautiful, but not in the G.I. pin-up type sense. Again there is the similarity to Anna Pavlova, who would look elegant and chic today in any salon or drawing-room, because her elegance was timeless. By all this, I do not mean to suggest that Fonteyn’s Christian Dior evening frocks and day dresses are not modish, but nothing she wears suggests the “latest word.”
One more word about her actions. I have mentioned her complete lack of pretentiousness. I should like to emphasize her equal lack of apparent awareness of her exalted position in her chosen calling. With the company, she makes no demands, puts on no airs. There is no false grandeur and none of the so-called “temperament” that many lesser ballerinas feel called upon to display upon the slightest provocation, and often upon no provocation at all. She is one who submits to the discipline of a great and continuous and uninterrupted and secure company. Fonteyn works as hard, with daily classes and rehearsals, mayhap harder, as any other of the large personnel. Her relations with the company are on the same plane. When the company travels in buses, Margot piles into the buses with them, joins in with the company at all times, is a member of it and an inspiration to it. The company, individually and collectively, love her and have the highest respect for her.
Margot’s warning to me not to try to disturb her before a performance had nothing to do with pose or “temperament.” It is simply that in order to live up to her reputation she has a duty, exactly as she has a duty to the role she is to enact, and because of these things, she has the artist’s natural nervousness increased before the rise of the curtain. She must be alone and silent with her thoughts in order to have herself under complete control and be at her best.
In all ballet I have never known a finer colleague, or one possessed of a greater amount of genuine good-heartedness. The examples of this sort of thing are endless, but one incident pointing it up stands out in my mind.
A certain American ballerina was on a visit to London. Margot invited this American girl to go to Paris with her. “Freddy” Ashton was also coming along, she said, and it would be fun.
“I can’t go,” replied the American ballerina. “I’ve nothing to wear that’s fit to be seen in Paris.”
“Come, come, don’t be silly,” replied Margot. “Here, take this suit of mine. I’ve never worn it.”