From Publishers Weekly
Margot Fonteyn (1919–1991) earned her title of prima ballerina assoluta with her elegant presence, exquisite musicality and eloquent line. She was Frederick Ashton's muse, Rudolf Nureyev's partner and, for more than 40 years, the ideal of the English ballet style. As Daneman relates in this admiring and compulsively readable biography, well before forging her partnership with Nureyev, Fonteyn was a star, Britain's "Queen of Ballet." She was already in her early 40s when Nureyev defected in 1961 and she danced Giselle with him; despite the 20-year age gap, the unlikely pair generated magic on stage. Fonteyn was rejuvenated as a dancer: her career lasted an additional 15 years. But in Daneman's astute telling, Fonteyn's personal life proves more fascinating than her dance legend. She performed in London during the blitz, becoming "a national mascot," and was discovered in her hotel bed with a lover the night German troops entered the Hague. She had many lovers (Nureyev perhaps among them) before marrying Roberto Arias in 1955; Arias was a former Panamanian ambassador suspected of planning a coup against the government of President Ernesto de la Guarda. Fonteyn gave her final performance in the early 1970s and then retired to Panama to live with Arias, who had been paralyzed in an assassination attempt. Daneman has impeccable credentials: a graduate of London's Royal Ballet School and a former member of the Australian Ballet company, she's written four novels. Both critically sophisticated and dramatically compelling, this is a must-read for balletomanes as well as biography aficionados. Illus. not seen by PW. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com
When Britain's Sadler's Wells Ballet came to the old Metropolitan Opera House in 1955, my roommates and I (dancers all three) took turns all day standing in a line that snaked around the block. What I remember most vividly from that evening's performance was Margot Fonteyn in Mikhail Fokine's "Firebird." We were used to Maria Tallchief's cool, steely power in George Balanchine's version of the work. Fonteyn, wearing a veritable chieftain's war bonnet of red feathers, was a leaping, quivering flame -- passionate yet not fully human. Half a century later, I learn from Meredith Daneman's new biography, Margot Fonteyn: A Life, that the role's creator, Tamara Karsavina, had pressed the English dancer to this characterization: "You are a wild bird, Margot," Karsavina told her, "you've never felt a human hand on your body before, you've never been caught and it's terrible." That's what Fonteyn showed us that night.This insight is not the only one I gained from Daneman's book. Hers is the most thorough of all the biographies to date, including Fonteyn's Autobiography. Daneman came to her task as a former dancer (with the Australian Ballet) and a fan; the pensive early photograph that graces the book's cover is one that hung for years over the author's bed. That she understands the ballet world and the physical demands of dance so well is one of the book's greatest assets. Daneman has also written four novels, so, although her narrative is anchored in massive research, it is shaped as drama.Here fans may learn things about Britain's greatest ballerina and muse of Britain's greatest choreographer, Frederick Ashton, that they'd rather not know. One of the most memorable qualities she displayed in her roles (some danced, against all odds, into her sixties) was her absolute purity. "She was the only one [playing the role of Chloë]," choreographer Ronald Hynd told Daneman, "who could portray virginity. . . . There was something . . . oh, just stainless about her." It's startling to think of her fresh 16-year-old Aurora in "Sleeping Beauty," her naively sensual Juliet, fragile Giselle and playful Ondine in relation to Daneman's revelations about her private life. Virginal? She was apparently something of a sexual athlete, and one of her lovers, scene designer John Craxton, called her attitude to love "completely pagan."Given that her career was extraordinarily long for a ballerina, second only to that of Alicia Alonso, it's interesting to learn that she wasn't gung-ho about ballet as a child. Born Margaret Hookham, she did part of her early dance training in Shanghai during the two years (1931-33) that her father worked there for the American Tobacco Company. She found lessons in "free" dancing and a little "Turkish" solo she performed less confining than ballet classes. However, her mother, Nita (née Hilda) Hookham -- later dubbed "the Black Queen" by Frederick Ashton, after the formidable figure in Ninette de Valois's ballet "Checkmate" -- was determined to have a ballet star in the family, and she pursued that goal fiercely, educating herself as she went along.Not long after young Peggy was accepted into the ballet school in London's Sadler's Wells Theatre, her "elegant limbs and well-poised head" and "colt-like quality" caught the eye of de Valois, founder and director of the company then called the Vic-Wells Ballet. Even while noting that the slim, dark child seemed to have no particular ambition to enter the company and was just as interested in musical comedy, de Valois prodded, guided and finally hired her at the extraordinarily young age of 14. She was still only 15 when Frederick Ashton cast her as a mulatto prostitute in a revival of his "Rio Grande" in 1935. He hadn't thought much of her in his "Les Rendezvous," and found her stubborn, but when he decided that the company's principal ballerina, Alicia Markova, was getting a swelled head (i.e., refusing to dance some of her old roles in his ballets), he turned to the girl now known as "Margot." Daneman's prose astutely captures her image in "Rio Grande": "The sight of her still child-like body, half-clothed in that gaudy see-through costume, her smooth black hair frizzed out around her flashing eyes, extended and excited the staid public concept of what might constitute an English dancer." When Markova left the company, Fonteyn stepped into all her roles.A biography of Margot Fonteyn is also inevitably a history of the company now known as the Royal Ballet and the dancers who made it famous. Daneman charts Fonteyn's progress through the early years, when the pay was low and the seasons short, and company members appeared in operas at Covent Garden and plays at the Old Vic, in addition to jobbing around in revues and musicals in order to make ends meet. When war was declared in 1939, the troupe toured the provinces to boost morale; then there were more than enough performances -- as many as three a day. Daneman describes in detail the Sadler's Wells's astounding debut in New York -- the unseasonably hot October day in 1949 when Margot Fonteyn became an international star. Her Aurora in the company's glorious postwar production of "The Sleeping Beauty" was a triumph, landing her picture on the cover of Time magazine. We learn the ins and outs of the history-making partnership that began in 1962 between a revivified Fonteyn and a young defector from Soviet Russia, nearly 20 years her junior, Rudolf Nureyev. They danced together until 1979, during which time, as Ninette de Valois so wisely remarked, "He brought her out, and she brought him up."The book's pages bring to life Robert Helpmann -- Fonteyn's first dancing partner, actor as well as dancer, and hilarious offstage cut-up; Michael Somes, also Fonteyn's frequent partner; Moira Shearer, a rival after that red-haired beauty's success in the film "The Red Shoes"; Constant Lambert, the brilliant, rumpled, booze-sodden composer and conductor who was Fonteyn's lover for a number of years; Roland Petit, who can be blamed for advising her to get a nose job; and many others, including Roberto "Tito" Arias, her husband. Fonteyn met Arias in 1937 as a well-to-do and politically connected young Panamanian student when the Sadler's Wells was performing at Cambridge University in England. Charmed by him (as were many other women), she finally married him in 1955 but was considering separation when, in 1964, immersed in the murky conflicts of Panamanian politics, he was shot in the back by a rival and spent the rest of his life as a quadriplegic in a wheelchair. From then on, she was unwavering in her devotion, although the constant, exhausting tours to help finance his medical expenses often kept her away from him.Daneman's sources provide vivid insights into Fonteyn the dancer. Ballerina Violette Verdy is enlightening on the subject of the invisible rod that seemed to run through Fonteyn's body: "That 'pull' [up] was the centre of her discipline, her reserve; and whatever came out of it -- be it a glance, or a turn of the cheek, or an inclination of the head -- could be read as something of great importance and value. Her moves were not as bold as I was used to from some of the French- or Russian-trained dancers. Nor were her extensions so high. But her connecting steps were light and quick, an expression of spirit, some burst of joy: little movements of the heart in the feet and the legs. An enchaînement was never a series of steps, it was a phrase."Fonteyn was not an uncomplicated woman. Her usual modesty and sweet, unflappable nature contrasted with occasional recklessness and unwise decisions. Offstage she projected gentility, even prudishness, and she had a highly developed sense of fashion. Yet this was a woman who naively carried a suitcase of guns into Panama for her husband's cause, and in her last years devoted herself to cattle breeding on their farm outside Panama City. And try envisioning this: The ballerina who seemed so pristine to us walks into Nureyev's bedroom one morning, skirting the debris of a riotous party the night before, finds him slumbering naked amid sailors, wiggles his big toe, and says, "Rudolf, dear, it's time to get up. We have to film the balcony scene."She could play to perfection "Swan Lake" 's Odette -- the vulnerable, fluttering, enchanted creature, but also Odette's darting, gleaming, evil double, Odile. If she played these roles long past her prime, it was not just to make money, it was because, as another Fonteyn biographer, Keith Money, put it, "she was, heart and soul, a performing animal." That heart, that soul shone out through every step.Reviewed by Deborah Jowitt Copyright 2004, The Washington Post Co. All Rights Reserved.

From Booklist
*Starred Review* Adored British prima ballerina Margot Fonteyn lived a life as fantastic as the fairy-tale plots of the ballets she made her own. The full story of her exceptional life and complex temperament has never before been told, and Daneman, a dancer and a novelist, seems to have been born to write this capacious and compulsively readable biography. With its lush detail and probing analysis, her many-faceted portrait of Fonteyn embodies the dancer's dramatic energy and mesmerizing allure. Born Peggy Hookham in 1919, she had the crucial support of her tirelessly ambitious mother; Ninette de Valois, director of the Royal Ballet; and choreographer Frederick Ashton. Daneman vividly re-creates each of Fonteyn's demanding roles and empathically chronicles her artistry, "legendary stamina," pragmatism, sense of style, aplomb, and unique appeal, not to mention her love affairs, rivalries, and wretched marriage to the philandering Panamanian fixer and politician Roberto Arias. In spite of numerous obstacles, Fonteyn attained new heights of accomplishment and fame in her midforties when she began dancing with a flamboyant partner half her age, Rudolph Nureyev. Enrapturing into her sixties, Dame Fonteyn lived life with grace and fortitude on her own demanding terms. (For more portraits of extraordinary dancers, see the adjacent Read-alikes column.) Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Book Description
The legend of Margot Fonteyn has touched every ballet dancer who has come after her, and her genius endures in the memory of anyone who saw her dance. Yet until now, the complete story of her life has remained untold. Meredith Daneman, a novelist and former dancer, reveals the fascinating story of Peggy Hookham, a little girl from suburban England, who grew up to become a Dame of the British Empire and the most famous ballerina in the world. This completely riveting and definitive biography chronicles Fonteyn’s early years and her intense connection to her mother, the "Black Queen"; her loves in bohemian thirties and forties London; her relationship with her balletic Svengali, Frederick Ashton; her conquest of New York with the Sadler’s Wells Ballet; and her final years in Panama with her husband, Roberto Arias. Daneman reflects on Fonteyn’s "lyricism and limpid purity of line, so potent with theatrical moment that even film cannot capture it" and the world of ballet from the birth of the British Royal Ballet to Rudolf Nureyev, her final partner and rumored lover. Balletomanes and readers of biography alike will applaud Daneman’s vivid, insightful, and highly entertaining work. Based on more than ten years of research and lavishly illustrated with beautiful and evocative photographs, Margot Fonteyn is an exquisite biography that is supremely worthy of its alluring subject.

About the Author
Meredith Daneman, a graduate of London’s Royal Ballet School and former member of the Australian Ballet Company, has published four novels.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

"The legend of Margot Fonteyn has touched every ballet dancer who has come after her, and her genius endures in the memory of anyone who saw her dance. Yet until now, the complete story of her life has remained untold. Meredith Daneman, a novelist and former dancer, reveals the story of Peggy Hookham, a little girl from suburban England, who grew up to become a Dame of the British Empire and the most famous ballerina in the world. More than ten years of interviews and research, including exclusive access to Fonteyn's and her mother's never-before-seen diaries and letters, come together to create this definitive biography that sheds light on aspects of Fonteyns's life and career that have hitherto remained secret." "Fonteyn claimed to have had her first experience of flying when she was three years old, little knowing that she would be doing just that in front of audiences for most of her life. From the age of four, she devoted herself to the technique of ballet with a single-minded focus extraordinary in a young girl. Having a forceful, ambitious Irish Latina mother helped, as did the fierce devotion and support of Ninette de Valois, the founder of the Sadler's Wells Ballet and Fonteyn's early champion. Through years of grueling training, Fonteyn would perfect her craft and fulfill her destiny, becoming England's beloved prima ballerina and enchanting audiences the world over with her legendary performances ad Odette in Swan Lake, Stravinsky's Firebird and Princess Aurora in The Sleeping Beauty, the role that brought her celebrity in America." As the author states in her introduction, Fonteyn's heart deeply colored her dancing and was as important a part of her success as her technique. Daneman explores Fonteyn's emotional life with a nuanced and perceptive understanding, including her intense connection to her mother, the "Black Queen"; her loves in bohemian thirties and forties London; her relationship with her balletic Svengali, Frederick Ashton; her affair

FROM THE CRITICS

Toni Bentley - The New York Times

Meredith Daneman's Margot Fonteyn has captured what few know: the heartbreak behind the heroine. Daneman, herself a former professional dancer and the author of four novels, has written the definitive book on this icon beloved of balletomanes around the world. She has also captured on the page the power of nobility radiated by her subject, a woman so dedicated, so self-effacing, so stubborn and so loving that her story manages to attain by its tragic ending the same effect as one of her performances.

Deborah Jowitt - The Washington Post

[Daneman's] is the most thorough of all the biographies to date, including Fonteyn's Autobiography. Daneman came to her task as a former dancer (with the Australian Ballet) and a fan; the pensive early photograph that graces the book's cover is one that hung for years over the author's bed. That she understands the ballet world and the physical demands of dance so well is one of the book's greatest assets.

Publishers Weekly

Margot Fonteyn (1919-1991) earned her title of prima ballerina assoluta with her elegant presence, exquisite musicality and eloquent line. She was Frederick Ashton's muse, Rudolf Nureyev's partner and, for more than 40 years, the ideal of the English ballet style. As Daneman relates in this admiring and compulsively readable biography, well before forging her partnership with Nureyev, Fonteyn was a star, Britain's "Queen of Ballet." She was already in her early 40s when Nureyev defected in 1961 and she danced Giselle with him; despite the 20-year age gap, the unlikely pair generated magic on stage. Fonteyn was rejuvenated as a dancer: her career lasted an additional 15 years. But in Daneman's astute telling, Fonteyn's personal life proves more fascinating than her dance legend. She performed in London during the blitz, becoming "a national mascot," and was discovered in her hotel bed with a lover the night German troops entered the Hague. She had many lovers (Nureyev perhaps among them) before marrying Roberto Arias in 1955; Arias was a former Panamanian ambassador suspected of planning a coup against the government of President Ernesto de la Guarda. Fonteyn gave her final performance in the early 1970s and then retired to Panama to live with Arias, who had been paralyzed in an assassination attempt. Daneman has impeccable credentials: a graduate of London's Royal Ballet School and a former member of the Australian Ballet company, she's written four novels. Both critically sophisticated and dramatically compelling, this is a must-read for balletomanes as well as biography aficionados. Illus. not seen by PW.Agent, Esther Newberg at ICM. (On sale Oct. 11) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

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