![]() ![]() ![]() She not only started studying at the usual early age, but she was thrust into tremendous responsibility, as the leading dancer of the young Sadler’s Wells Ballet, when still in her mid-teens. The life of Fonteyn, the most celebrated ballerina of the twentieth century after Pavlova, fits all these circumstances almost to the point of exaggeration. ![]() And they share a quality that, late in life, Margot Fonteyn identified as the one that “has helped me most”: tenacity. They start preparing professionally as children their lives are ruthlessly and narrowly concentrated on their work they have a mother to nurture them, fight for them they inspire a powerful creative personality, who then shapes them (Pavlova had Petipa Karsavina had Fokine a dozen or more, from Danilova and Toumanova to Farrell and McBride, had Balanchine) and they find themselves in their forties either finished or hanging on precariously-ballerinas don’t age gracefully into character roles and grandmother roles, the way talented actresses can. The stories of most great ballerinas, however different their temperaments, are basically the same. ![]()
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