Margot Fonteyn - the greatest ballerina of the 20th Century?

Was Margot Fonteyn the greatest ballerina of the 20th century? I think so. It's a great pity current generations have no way to judge her greatness.

I say that because watching her on film, one gets no sense of her gift. A film star's charisma is conveyed by by their facial expressions in close-up, and their voice - two things we don't get in ballet performances. Watching Fonteyn's performances today on TV, I couldn't blame young people for wondering what all the fuss was about. There's no denying that today's ballerinas have better technique and a much greater repertoire of tricks.

But ask any audience after her performance, and chances are very few of them could analyze her technique. They simply knew they had seen a phenomenon. She had such a presence you could sense her, even before you could see her. That charisma flooded over the footlights to her audience. Watching Fonteyn dance, you were simply mesmerised.

My first experience of that charisma wasn't at a ballet performance. It was in the hall at the Royal Academy of Dancing, at a prize-giving. While the General Manager was speaking, I felt a sudden change in the air. Without prompting, everyone in the audience turned to look at the back of the room (she had arrived late). There, quietly, Fonteyn was entering the hall. The GM motioned for her to come forward and take her place in the reserved seats. I watched her walk down the aisle. I have never seen such penetrating black eyes. It was amazing how such a tiny, unassuming person could fill the room so effortlessly!

I did see Fonteyn dance, in June 1971 at a Gala Performance arranged by Richard Buckle. Here is what I had to say about her performance:

"Fonteyn was out of this world. She wore a Romantic tutu in shimmering purple. I scarcely noticed her footwork. All I could see were those beautiful, beautiful arms, rippling and flowing, curving and extending - sheer poetry! She could have bourree'd the whole time and still captivated me with those arms."

...."Fonteyn and Nureyev provided the grand finale [from Sleeping Beauty]. And what a finale! Her face looks so young, as they say Pavlova's always did. Even though it was only the pas de deux, she gave a complete and convincing picture of the young, newly-in-love Princess Aurora. It was an experience."

Unbelievably, that year Margot Fonteyn was 52! Any other ballerina would have retired years before, but Fonteyn had a husband with high medical bills and expensive tastes to support. So she danced on in spite of nagging injuries and the need for regular injections in her feet.

The Royal Academy (where I worked at the time) tried to find her a new career by organising Master Classes, but as a teacher she was a disaster. One of the managers told me, "musicality and dance come so naturally to Margot, she has no idea how to explain it to anyone else."

Unfortunately, most recordings of Fonteyn are from late in her career - the Nureyev years. The younger generation may be disappointed even with the few examples of her earlier performances, because dancers today are taught to value athleticism and bravura technique over musicality and artistry. Fonteyn's musicality was wonderful - one of the reasons she was so mesmerising was because she blended with the music so perfectly. And while her technique was not mind-blowing, she had great precision - each position was just so, exactly as the choreographer wanted.

Modern dancers should also look at Fonteyn's feet - there is nothing between her toes and her shoe except a scrap of lamb's wool, as was the practice in those days. The feet of today's dancers often look out of proportion, because the block of the shoe is padded with gel or foam inserts and who knows what - which makes pointe work easier and less painful and thus makes tricks easier, but means that the dancer loses contact with the floor. There's a delicacy about the way earlier ballerinas used their feet, which is lost in the current generation.

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All text copyright Marisa Wright. Photos by Moskbichka on Flickr.