Margot Fonteyn

Margot Fonteyn, born Margaret Evelyn Hookham on 18 May 1919 in Reigate, England, was an English ballerina and Broadway performer whose career spanned several decades. Born to Felix John Hookham, a British mechanical engineer employed by the British-American Tobacco Company, and Hilda Hookham, whose own mother was the illegitimate daughter of an Irish woman and a Brazilian industrialist, Fonteyn adopted her stage name by modifying her maternal grandfather's surname, Fontes, a Portuguese word meaning fountain, into the more British-sounding Fonteyn. She died on 21 February 1991 from ovarian cancer, exactly 29 years after her celebrated debut alongside Rudolf Nureyev in Giselle.

Fonteyn began ballet lessons at the age of four in Ealing, where her mother enrolled her and her older brother Felix in classes with Grace Bosustow. Her mother, Hilda, attended the earliest lessons herself, learning basic positions in order to better support her daughter's development, and remained a constant backstage presence throughout Fonteyn's career, earning the nickname Black Queen from colleagues and teachers. At five, Fonteyn danced in a charity concert and received her first newspaper notice in the Middlesex Country Times. When her father's work required the family to relocate, she moved first to Louisville, Kentucky, where she did not study ballet, and later to China, living in Tianjin and Hong Kong before settling in Shanghai in 1931. There she trained with Russian émigré teacher Georgy Goncharov, an experience that deepened her affinity for the Russian style of ballet over the Cecchetti method she had found less appealing.

Returning to London at 14, Fonteyn began studies with Serafina Astafieva before being spotted by Dame Ninette de Valois and invited to join the Vic-Wells Ballet School, the institution that would eventually become the Royal Ballet. Her first solo stage appearance came in 1933, when she performed as a child actress in de Valois's The Haunted Ballroom under the interim name Margot Fontes. In 1934 she danced as a snowflake in The Nutcracker, still using that name, before formally adopting Margot Fonteyn the following year. She succeeded Alicia Markova as the company's prima ballerina in 1935. The company's choreographer, Sir Frederick Ashton, created numerous roles for Fonteyn and her partner Robert Helpmann throughout the 1930s and 1940s.

When the Sadler's Wells Ballet relocated to the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden in 1946, Fonteyn's primary partner became Michael Somes. Her interpretation of The Sleeping Beauty became a defining role for both herself and the company, and Ashton continued to create works for her, including Symphonic Variations, Cinderella, Daphnis and Chloe, Ondine, and Sylvia. In 1949, she led the company on a tour of the United States, establishing herself as an international celebrity. She had previously appeared in televised ballet broadcasts in Britain, and in the early 1950s performed on The Ed Sullivan Show, contributing to a broader American interest in dance. In 1955 she married Panamanian politician Roberto Arias and appeared in a live color production of The Sleeping Beauty broadcast on NBC. Three years later, she and Somes performed in a BBC television adaptation of Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker. By 1959, the Royal Ballet permitted Fonteyn to work as a freelance dancer in response to the volume of international guest artist requests she received.

The most celebrated chapter of Fonteyn's career began in 1961, when Rudolf Nureyev defected from the Kirov Ballet in Paris. Despite a 19-year age difference that initially made Fonteyn reluctant to partner with him, she danced alongside Nureyev in his Royal Ballet debut in Giselle on 21 February 1962. The partnership became an international sensation. Their classical repertoire together included Le Corsaire Pas de Deux, Les Sylphides, La Bayadère, Swan Lake, and Raymonda, with Nureyev at times adapting choreographies to highlight their combined strengths. Ashton created Marguerite and Armand specifically for the two of them, and they were also recognized for their performances in the title roles of Sir Kenneth MacMillan's Romeo and Juliet. In 1964, Fonteyn's husband was shot in an assassination attempt and became a quadriplegic, requiring ongoing care for the rest of his life. Fonteyn entered semi-retirement in 1972, though she continued to dance periodically through the end of that decade. In 1979, the Royal Ballet formally designated her prima ballerina assoluta, a title conferred upon her by Queen Elizabeth II.

Fonteyn's Broadway career included an appearance in 1975 in Fonteyn & Nureyev on Broadway, bringing her celebrated partnership with Nureyev to the Broadway stage. Following her retirement from performance, she settled in Panama, where she wrote books, raised cattle, and cared for her husband until her death in 1991.