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Rating:  -
I feel like the earlier reviewer, the one who lugged this book to Europe with him and missed half the sights in doing so. I've been reading it for weeks and I never wanted it to end--not until the very sad last days after Fonteyn's retirement when everything just went from bad to worse.
I was startled to find out number one, how poor she was most of her life, and how she had no pension, no savings, nothing! It was just tragic, and if you ask me, marriage to Tito Arias was a huge mistake. Loving him, or finding him lovable, was Fonteyn's tragic flaw, and I still can't figure it out (why she did it). here Daneman isn't much help because underneath a posture of "no comment," and the biographer's need to find something redeeming in all of her characters, you can tell she doesn't care for him any more than I do.
Perhaps Fonteyn was drawn by his foreignness, but she must have met thousands and thousands of more attractive foreign people.
Daneman also makes you think that Nureyev was a great dancer--only for about ten months, and then he turned into a parody of himself. I don't think that's entirely true, but after going through "Rudimania" in the pages of the book, I did begin to question whether he ever had an unselfish thought in his entire life. Margot makes one bad decision after another in this book and, otherwise an admirable character in so many ways, she does not seem to have ever felt regret. Daneman seems to think that she might well have retired after the success of Ashton's Ondine, and left the field to Lynn Seymour, Antoinette Sibley, and the American ballerinas. This is a trikcky proposition, but at any rate the remainser of Fonteyn's career shows her working pretty much out of the old-fashioned ballet theater conventions she had for so long been used to, and we see the fragmentation of Ninette de Valois' Sadler Wells/Royal Ballet in terms that feel very real to us, painful. The whole business was predicated on having "stars," just as in Hollywood, and yet when the stars got too powerful, and diva-esque, something of the "company" feeling went by the wayside.
Daneman brings us as close as is humanly possible to being inside Margot Fonteyn's skin, both as a woman and as an artist. Her decsriptions of dancing are impeccable, vivid. She makes me feel I was there for the premiere of Ashton's WISE VIRGINS or LES SIRENES or the bizarre LUCIFER that Martha Graham concocted for Fonteyn and Nureyev. How she does this is a mystery, but it involves large helpings of meticulous and cleverly edited interviews; a sense of drama and the ridiculous; an unabashed curiosity about sex and matters of the body (illness included) and most of all, she knows what she's talking about from a practical and musical perspective.
This book has something I've never seen, and I'm not sure how I feel about it. One passage had a footnote that I wanted to read, a passage purporting to give Ashton's account of Margot's sexual prowess in shockingly gynecological terms. "My goodness, who told the author that?" I wondered. Following the footnote, i read, to my surprise, "Frederick Ashton, source withheld."
Source withheld? That's a new one to me! is this common now in biography, to drop these bombshells and let everyone off the hook?
Despite my qualms regarding this newstyle footnoting practice, this was the biography of the year. I don't expect another book to touch it for a good long time.
Rating: -
I dragged this huge biography of Britain's most famous ballerina with me to Europe, and missed quite a few monuments along the way. Daneman's engaging, thoroughly engrossing biography of the extraordinary rise and very long reign of Fonteyn at the pinnacle of the ballet world, makes for compulsive reading. For not only is this the life of Fonetyn, it is an in-depth look at the rise of English ballet that managed to forge its own mighty presence in a world thoroughly dominated by the Russians. Peggy Hookum, with the immense and far-sighted support of a loving and determined mother, became a key player in the ascendancy of Saddler's Wells and later the Royal Ballet. Favored by the company's indomitable founder, Ninette De Valois, Fonteyn danced her first Aurora in SLEEPING BEAUTY while still in her teens. De Valois show-cased her progress in the classics as well as in ballets created by Frederick Ashton. Daneman offers vivid portraits of the fledgling company's big personalites such as Robert Helpmann (Fonteyn's first significant dancing partner), Constant Lambert (the company's music director, conductor, composer and long-time lover of Fonteyn), and Michael Somes (Fonteyn's partner in the 40s, 50s and early 60s). This is not always a harmonious group. De Valois emerges here as a shrewd leader who forced Alicia Markova,the company's first prima ballerina out in order to pave the way for her favorites, and dangerously manipulated the careers of Beryl Gray and Moira Shearer (most tellingly Shearer who was a star due to THE RED SHOES film. Sol Hurok, who presented the Saddler's Wells Ballet in it's historic first visit to the Metropolitan Opera House in 1949, demanded that Shearer dance the opening night Aurora. De Valois stuck to her guns and insisted Fonteyn have that honor--and prevailed). Ashton is revealed not only as the great choreopgraphic genius that he was, but also a petty, snobbish and often vindictive company in-fighter, fully capapble of getting what he wanted (his lack of support of Kenneth MacMillan's choice of Lynne Seymour to dance the first prima of the company's ROMEO AND JULIET, almost certainly seems to be a petty act of jealousy). Robert Helpmann's character, great humor, and ability to keep the company going through the war years, makes him admirable--and very quotable--in every way.
Throughout the many years of her long dominance, Fonteyn is totally fascinating, although she nearly seems at times a passive player in the events surrounding her. Some have complained here that the book is too long, or that Daneman resorts to gossip in trying to find out if Fonteyn and Nuryev were ever lovers. Nonsense, we all want to know and Daneman knows we want to know. Nureyev was a sacred monster, a genius and a wild man of discipline, enourmous sexual appetites, self-indugent and often thoroghly dislikable. Danenman captures the complexity of the relationship between Fonteyn and Nureyev. Each brought to the other a special quality that enhanced their partnership and enduring affection. Nureyev could be cruel, hurling verbal abuse and acting insufferably childish towards her, but Fonteyn's dancing in her early 40s was a revelation to critics, audiences, and herself--she actually managed for a few more years to top herself in her prime. De Valois actually thought this partnership could give Margot five more years of a career. Their partnership would extend to 17 years.
Daneman's effort is hardly hagiographic. Fonteyn, who was often admired for her diligence, hard work, and ability to be an inspiring team leader, was also capable of being competitive, politically naive (her questionable friendships with Imelda Marcos, General Noriega, and Chile's Pinnochet are not glossed over), and far wilder than her lady-like exterior would have us believe. She had lousy taste in men and Daneman, without resorting to too much psychologising, makes us understand her attraction to the lousy men in her life. Constant Lambert was a talented musician who cultivated Fonteyn's life-long love of books (she was poorly educated), but he was also a hopeless drunk, fat and unkempt, who ultimately abandoned Fonteyn. Even worse is her long relationship with Roberto Arias, the spoiled and pampered Panamanian who became Fonteyn's only husband. A politician, serial adulterer, Arias was shot by a political ally, rendering him a paraplegic for the rest of his life. At the time of the shooting, Fonteyn was seriously considering a divorce from a husband who was rarely around and flagrantly conducted his affairs right under his wife's nose. Yet when Arias was shot, Fonteyn more than proved her loyalty. The huge medical costs over the ensuing twenty five years of his life would bankrupt Fonteyn, forcing her to dance, her technique sagging visibly, until she was nearly 60. She endured with most of her dignity in tact--and the bum she called her husband didn't deserve her loyalty.
Some very starry dancers from Pavlova to Sibley, Ulanova, Baryshnikov, Norah Kaye, Eric Bruhn, and others all add to Daneman's disctinctive narrative. Daneman's novelistic eye constantly offers the telling detail. Her writing often soars off the page. I felt I was witnessing the aura of magic that Fonteyn radiated from the stage. Even the oft-told tale of her complete triumph as Aurora during that historic first visit to the U.S. in 1949, seems newly minted here. This is what a great biography should be, and with Fonteyn at its dazzling center, here are hours of thrilling history, behind-the-scenes drama, and all the color anyone could expect from a fabulous life brilliantly told.
Rating:  -
First, please find an old library copy of Dancing in Petersburg, the memoirs of Mathilde Kschessinska, 19th century ballerina and courtesan, for perspective. Then read the story of Margot Fonteyn, a great 20th century ballerina. This biography is comprehensive, perhaps too much so. By the last page, I felt I had finished a long, but ultimately satisfying journey. But the high points of Fonteyn's life were so dramatic, her genius so luminous, that slow sections of the book were amply compensated for. Having said that, I do think the biography would have been better for being cut by a third. The long explanations of Panamanian politics slowed down the narrative. And I felt much of the earlier periods, especially the early 1940's and much of the 1950's, were excessively detailed. The editor should have been more pro-active. The reader is not interested in all the author's research, comprehensive though it may be, but only in the most compelling parts of the story. To compare again, Fonteyn's autobiography (the edition I own from 1976) is so romantic, so lavender scented, I almost missed my youthful innocence and ignorance of so much of the truth of her life. This biography contains more truth, and inevitably, the romance is diluted. Yes, our ballerina was as much a courtesan as her illustrious predecessor, Kschessinska, but ultimately she took her secrets to the grave. All the speculation from oh, so many sources, about Margot and Rudi adds up to little more than gossip. We shall never know, shall we?
Rating: -
This is a wonderfully researched and written bio of a great ballerina and a fascinating human being. Ms. Daneman has made her work very well; this is certainly the definitive story of Fonteyn's life and her times in the ballet world. Congratulations!
Rating: -
Throughout her long career, audiences had something like a physical response to Margot Fonteyn dancing. Even now, in film clips, there is something there, something inexplicable that makes you gasp. She strikes you to your deepest core. That thing, of course, was genius. In her outstanding biography of the great British ballerina, Meredith Daneman guides us through a life lived in art. "Margot Fonteyn" is the best sort of biography, one that is as engrossing as a really good novel.
Born Peggy Hookham in northern England, Fonteyn was fortunate to have fine teachers from the start. When her father's business took the family to Shanghai in the late 1920's, Her astute mother found exiled Russian ballerinas to pass their training on to her. They returned to England in the mid-30's and Peggy auditioned for Ninette de Valois' Sadlers Wells ballet company. She was accepted, re-baptized Margot Fonteyn, and danced for Sadlers Wells (later the Royal Ballet) for most of a career that lasted until she was nearly 60 years old.
Forget about anorexia, drug problems, temper tantrums, and injuries. "Simple", and "pure" are two words used to describe her art, and that simplicity carried over into her life. If she had never rocketed to international fame following the company's first New York visit following WWII, it would have been fine with her. She learned and grew from every change she faced-never more obvious than her ability to reach a new level of greatness during her partnership with Rudolf Nureyev. That partnership began when she was on the verge of retirement and extended her career for nearly two decades.
If there is any fault with Daneman's biography, it is that it is a little too adoring. Daneman does not skip over Fonteyn's attraction to unworthy men, notably alky composer Constant Lambert and creepy Panamanian philanderer/thug/husband Tito Arias, but somehow it doesn't show it to detract from her as a person. The photos selected for the book are also a little disappointing. Nonetheless this beautifully written, entrancing biography of genius is a wonderful read and makes you want to see films, video, anything that lets you again experience the joy of Margot dancing.
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