Customer Reviews

MARGOT FONTEYN

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.

Margot Fonteyn was perhaps the most beloved ballerina of her generation, but until now there hasnt been a full, comprehensive biography of her eventful, colorful life and career. Former ballerina Meredith Daneman has at last given Margot the book she deserves.
Fans of the ballerina and also of ballet in general should get this book. Besides Fonteyn, there are several memorable characters that Daneman brings to life: the Royal Ballet Svengali Frederick Ashton, the indomitable, scheming Ninette de Valois, Fonteyn's ironwilled mother (known as Black Queen), Fonteyn's dastardly husband Tito Arias, Fonteyn's great partner Rudolf Nureyev, Fonteyn's lover Constant Lambert. Daneman describes the ruthless, competitive atmosphere of backstage at a ballet company, a world as entertaining as the onstage performances. About whether Fonteyn herself resorted to backstabbing and scheming, Daneman is ambiguous. She quotes friends as saying Fonteyn was "very competitive" but lets the readers make the final calls about some questionable events: Moira Shearer's fall from grace at Covent Garden, the "grabbing" of Juliet from Kenneth MacMillan's muse Lynn Seymour. Daneman somehow got access to Margot Fonteyn's mothers diaries, which she quotes liberally. Nita Hookham becomes the second heroine of the book: a smart, devoted woman of common sense and humor. If Nita Hookham is the second heroine of the book, then Ninette de Valois is the villainess: a woman who promoted her "favorites" and ruthlessly destroyed careers without a second thought.
As for Fonteyn herself, Daneman is sympathetic but candid. Margaret "Peggy" Hookham comes across as a complex personality. The ballerina who personified British gentility and grace was in her offstage life both reserved and passionate, naive and cunning, dignified and giggly. She was politically obtuse, supporting dictators like the Marcoses or General Pinochet (plus her revolutionary Panamanian husband Tito Arias), and even danced in apartheid South Africa. But she was also remarkably sensitive and supportive of her friend Rudolf Nureyev when he was dying of AIDS, and this is all the more impressive if anyone remembers the paranoid, homophobic atmosphere of the 1980s, even among the "educated" circles. Fonteyn could coldly cut off lovers, but remained slavishly devoted to her philandering husband Tito. She pinched pennies but generously supported her sister-in-law for life. One gets the feeling that Fonteyn grew to be a better person as she aged. Daneman includes enough anecdotes to give the reader a real sense of Margot's personality. A charming, if off-color one: when Ivan Nagy insisted on calling Margot "Dame", she called him "Sir." He explained that in Hungarian, "Sir" means "pubic hair," and from then on he was only "Sir" to her.
Like most biographies Daneman's isn't perfect. Some of it veers on the gossipy -- did we really need testaments from Margot's ex-lovers about how great she was "sexually"? I also felt Daneman was a bit unfair about Nureyev -- she's more judgemental about disapproving than the very genteel Fonteyn ever was. The pictures are surprisingly disappointing, especially for such a photographed figure as Margot. There are, however, some eyebrow-raising pictures of Margot posing topless during vacations with friends.
ETA: one thing I think is important to keep in mind about this book is that you should read it as a historical record not only of a dancer, but of an era in ballet history. The book is very thorough about Fonteyn's career, which went through a lot of "stages". There is quite a bit of backstage talk, and I for one took it with a grain of salt. For one, it is usually "secondhand" -- for instance, "someone heard Lynn Seymour say" rather than "Lynn Seymour said." I suppose this can't be helped but it's one thing to keep in mind.
But these are quibbles for a good addition to any balletomane's library. Daneman is lucky in that she chose a wonderful subject. Margot Fonteyn may not have been perfect, neither as a woman nor as a dancer, but I think readers will close the book with a sense of admiration and affection for the most graceful and enchanting of ballerinas.

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.

I so agree with the reviewer who said the author was lucky in her subject ... the four stars are for Margot, not Daneman. Margot's life is the history of ballet outside Russia and neither her life nor herself could fail to be fascinating. Wonderful to read all that history in one place. BUT ...

Oh god, do we really need all this sleazy speculation? Most of the book is devoted to who did with who and how. According to the author, everyone did everything with everybody. This based on the slightest whiff of a rumour from any source. Instead of real descriptions about the Fonteyn/Nureyev partnership, she goes on and on and on (pages and pages, seriously) about every form of physical contact that may have occurred between them and agonizes about whether actual "penetration" (that's really a quote) occurred. According to her it's a tragedy that we will never know because they both took the secret to their graves. Actually they both categorically denied it all their lives.

Fonteyn also gets a blast because when she wrote some filler in a book about Pavlova, acting as a presenter of Pavlova's own notes (NOT a biographer) she didn't tell everyone the rumour that Pavlova was (gasp) possibly illegitemite and (gasp gasp) possibly half Jewish. All Pavlova said was that her father had died when she was two and according to this author, Margot ought to have jumped right in there with the rumours and was negligent not doing so. This is a person I would never care to meet and spending 580 pages with her seriously detracts from the pleasure of spending 580 pages with Margot. Especially since, like most people who write books this long, she excelled in Creative Writing 101 and seriously needs an editor for her flowery passages.

So -5 for her and + 5 for Margot equals +4, Margot being worth a lot more.

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.

Who could look at the face in the photo on the cover of this book, and not fall in love with the one behind that image? What beauty. Of course, I am speaking from a man's point of view. By reading this book, one finds that a lot of men fell in love with Peggy Hookem....er....that is Margret Fontes....er....no wait, old Uncle Manoel Fontes couldn't have his family name dishonered by association with a "theatre" personage. What shortsightedness. So the name, so famous today, came out of the telephone book. The name "Fontene", which sounded British, was chosen with a minor change in spelling. The name Margot Fonteyn was born.

Yes, lots of men fell in love with her, but she like so many women had a hard time choosing the right man, and many of those she chose used her only for her beautiful flesh. Eventually, she found one whom she thought she loved, devoted her remaining life to, and even he was not worthy of her. His name was Tito Arias, a Panamanian, lawyer, politician, ambassador, divorcee, husband, revolutionary, gun runner, traitor (some would say), philanderer, and God knows what else. He even got Margot involved, arrested (and deported from Panama) in some of his scemes. Yet she loved him with all of her being, but she wouldn't give up her love for the ballet even for him. It's a good thing for him that she did not give up the ballet, because it was her money that supported him after he became a paraplegic in an assassination attempt.

Things were brought out in this biography that Margot would not have wanted known. Things of a personal nature about her intimacies with men who could not keep them private. Some are pure conjecture and some may be true, but Margot did not mention any such happenings in her own autobiography, so it is too bad they had to be brought out after she died. Yes, too bad.

She was not the oldest ballerina to ever dance on stage, but because of her indomitable will, reinvigerated by Rudolph Nureyev, she was able dance far longer than most ballerinas. Life returned her to the ages when she was 72, taken away by cancer, respector of no human being. Read this book about the remarkable, muse of the Royal Ballet.......Richard.

Daneman, Meredith 2004 Margot Fonteyn. Viking, New York ISBN-10: 0670843709 ISBN-13 978-0670843701

The dancer as a spy? One of the mysteries of Margot Fonteyn is her association and almost certain minor activities as an agent. This book hints at such (page numbers are taken from hardcover edition). First there is her association with Graham Greene, a known British agent during WWII; in an apparent inconsistency on page 265 she is said to be his lover, while on pages 279-280 he is merely said to enamored of her. On page 279 the author mentions Greene's love letters to Margot.


By 1959, when Greene has become at least on the surface an admirer of Castro, Margot finds herself with Castro named first president Manuel Urrutia Lleó's wife, Esperanza LIaguno, who (according to the author p. 352 and 366) was ransacking the wardrobes of deposed dictator Batista's wife (Martha Fernández de Batista).


At present admirers of Castro will not allow Grahame Greene's 1958 novel "Our man in Havana" (which most oddly predicts the 1962 presence of nuclear missiles in Cuba) to be mentioned in Wikipedia's Cuban section about authors who wrote on Cuba. These admirers of the communist dictator furiously erase each insertion of any reference to Greene and his work, giving one pause and setting one to wonder at the rationale behind this odd and extreme measure of zeal. Ernest Hemingway yes! Graham Greene No!


Through the book runs a continual thread of the open and clandestine politics of the geo-strategic country of Panama tied to her and her husband Robert "Tito" Arias. However, the clincher is Margot's role in the defection of Russian Ballet star Rudolf Nureyev (e.g. pp. 383, 386-396 and others).

The Castro government has allowed mention of some of Fontyn's activities to help impose blockade on UK weapon shipments to Cuba in late 1958 and in the Castro organized invasion of Panama by Cuban partisans of her husband Roberto Arias in 1959 (1). It was during the preparations for this invasion that the above mentioned wardrobe looting was observed by the famous ballet dancer.

One day, when the British Intelligence's secret files for this period are released, perhaps we will know the whole story.

[...]

I have never met a book I did not finish even though I did not like it. Well, this book will be the first. The writing is drawn out, in this adoring (annoying) tone, references made to people and things without an explanation, constant jumping back and forth. And the sentences and paragraphs are so long. Could you not afford an editor? And who cares who Margot slept with or how she did it? Really...two stars only for the effort and the paper it was printed on.

Massive but very readable balletomane essential in which we learn that her offstage life was as extraordinary as her onstage one.

This is the book I've been waiting for, All about Margot, Saw the movie , now read the book! Just started to read, but looks like the real deal. Recommended to anyone who loves ballet, and Margot Fonteyn. 5 stars.