Celebrating Margot Fonteyn via Zoom - Thursday 19 August 16.00-17.15
Hundreds of people have already booked to watch and listen to this Thursday 19 Zoom panel discussion on Margot Fonteyn. Have you? Please do so at https://www.vam.ac.uk/event/7OYa0eO3/online-talk-celebrating-dame-margot-fonteyn , and before Thursday, when ticket-holders will be sent Zoom links.
I’m the lucky chairman. My speakers are Monica Mason, Alfreda Thorogood, and Stephen Jefferies. All three danced in the special May 1979 Covent Garden performance marking Fonteyn’s sixtieth birthday; all of them knew Fonteyn, Ninette de Valois, Frederick Ashton, Michael Somes, and other key figures of Fonteyn’s career.
Monica Mason, for over twenty years before that 1979 performance, shared performances with Fonteyn, often as Myrtha to Fonteyn’s Giselle; she shared such roles as Odette-Odile with her; she shared partners (Rudolf Nureyev not least) with her; and in 1978 Fonteyn coached her as Fokine’s Firebird. Alfreda Thorogood first met Fonteyn as a girl of three; Fonteyn paid for her ballet studies with Vera Volkova, Fonteyn’s own most valued teacher; Thorogood’s husband, David Wall, may well have been the partner Fonteyn valued most in the late 1960s and 1970s, first singling him out when he was scarcely twenty, and dancing “Swan Lake”, “Romeo and Juliet”, and other ballets with him with a rapture (observers noted) surpassing even hers with Nureyev. Stephen Jefferies was one of Fonteyn’s very final partners, dancing Frederick Ashton’s “Amazon Forest” pas de deux with her in a London season in 1978.
Please book before Thursday! These illustrious panellists have much to say. And we plan to give time to questions from members of the Zoom audience.
Tuesday 17 August
1: The teenage Margot Fonteyn in “Giselle” Act One in 1937. Photograph: Gordon Anthony.
2: Thirty years later, Margot Fonteyn in “Giselle” Act Two, at the Paris Opéra. Photo: R. Faligant.
3: Margot Fonteyn as Odette in “Swan Lake”, with her chief partner of the 1950s, Michael Somes. Photo: Nugent Studios.
4: Margot Fonteyn and Robert Helpmann as Odile and Siegfried in “Swan Lake”, 1943. Photo: Russell Sedgwick.
5: Margot Fonteyn as Aurora in “The Sleeping Beauty”, 1946. Photograph: Gordon Anthony.
6: Margot Fonteyn, at age fifty, in Keith Money’s 1969 film of Act One of “The Sleeping Beauty”.
7: Margot Fonteyn studying with Vera Volkova. Photo: Felix Fonteyn.
8: Margot Fonteyn studying with Vera Volkova. Photo: Felix Fonteyn.
9: Frederick Ashton’s “Symphonic Variations”, when new in 1946. Left to right: Moira Shearer, Henry Danton, Margot Fonteyn, Michael Somes, Pamela May. Photo: Baron.
10: Fonteyn in a famous passage of motionless repose in Ashton’s “Symphonic Variations”, in a 1963 performance. Photo: Houston Rogers.
11: Margot Fonteyn and Royes Fernandes rehearsing Ashton’s “Symphonic Variations” (1946) in the Herod Atticus Theatre, Athens, Greece, in 1963. Photo: Keith Money.
12: Margot Fonteyn and Royes Fernandes rehearsing Ashton’s “Symphonic Variations” (1946) in the Herod Atticus Theatre, Athens, Greece, in 1963. Photo: Keith Money.
13: Detail of Margot Fonteyn’s hand, in a 1963 rehearsal of Ashton’s “Symphonic Variations” (1946) in the Herod Atticus Theatre, Athens, Greece. Photo: Keith Money.
14: Frederick Ashton with Margot Fonteyn in 1949: she is dressed as Cinderella going to the ball in Act Two of his three-act 1948 ballet. Photo: Felix Fonteyn.
15: Margot Fonteyn (Chloë), lifted by David Blair (Daphnis) in an early-1960s performance of Frederick Ashton’s “Daphnis and Chloë” (1951). Photo: Houston Rogers.
16: Margot Fonteyn, as the female Tiresias, with John Field, as her lover, in Frederick Ashton’s “Tiresias” (1951). Photo: Roger Wood.
17: Margot Fonteyn, newly appointed president of the Royal Academy of Dancing, with her predecessor in the post, Adeline Genée, in 1954. Photo: John Bignall.
18: Margot Fonteyn, President of the Royal Academy of Dancing, with Academy students in 1961. Photo: P.A.Reuter.
19: Michael Somes and Margot Fonteyn in Frederick Ashton’s “La Péri”. Photograph: Houston Rogers.
20: Margot Fonteyn as the title character of Frederick Ashton’s “Ondine” (1958). Ondine here dances with her shadow in her first scene in Act One. Photo: Houston Rogers.
21: Margot Fonteyn as Ondine in Frederick Ashton’s ballet.
22: Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev in Nureyev’s 1963 Royal Ballet production of the Shades scene of Marius Petipa’s “La Bayadère” (1877). Photo: Donald Southern.
23: Margot Fonteyn as Raymonda in Act One of Rudolf Nureyev’s production of Marius Petipa’s 1898 ballet.
24: Margot Fonteyn, at age fifty, with Rudolf Nureyev after a 1969 performance of the “Le Corsaire” pas de deux given at her New York Metropolitan Opera House gala on behalf of the Royal Academy of Dancing. Photo courtesy of Joy Brown.
25: Margot Fonteyn and David Wall after their first appearance together in “Swan Lake” in 1966. Photograph: Jennie Walton.
26: Margot Fonteyn and David Wall in a 1972 performance of Frederick Ashton’s “Birthday Offering” (1956).
27: Cover of Margot Fonteyn’s second book, “A Dancer’s World” (1978, W.H.Allen). Photo by Felix Fonteyn of Margot Fonteyn directing Monica Mason and David Wall.
28: Bows after Margot Fonteyn’s sixtieth birthday performance, Covent Garden, May 1979. Fonteyn, dressed as the Debutante in Frederick Ashton’s “Façade” (1931), is with Michael Somes and David Wall, two of the most important partners of her long career. Photo: Leslie Spatt.
29: Margot Fonteyn giving her flowers to Ninette de Valois after “Façade” at her sixtieth birthday performance in May 1979. Also visible , left to right: Derek Rencher, Michael Somes, Wayne Eagling, Genesia Rosato, Michael Coleman, Robert Helpmann, Jennifer Penney, David Wall. Photograph: Leslie Spatt.