Music: Coloratura on Tiptoe

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One night last week, an audience that overflowed into every inch of standing-room space in Manhattan’s Metropolitan Opera House listened breathlessly as the great gold curtain closed to the last romantic bars of Tchaikovsky’s Sleeping Beauty. As the footlights went up and the curtain parted again, a roar of applause rose to the Met’s gilded ceiling. Time after time, panting dancers took their bows, then skipped gracefully out of view. When at last a slender and dark-haired little ballerina appeared alone, the audience rose to its feet and cheered.

It had seen a performance that was astonishingly close to perfection, and had witnessed the first successful attempt in years to return elegance and the classical spirit to the Western ballet. Both had been brought to the U.S. by England’s Sadler’s Wells Ballet. With its gifts, Sadler’s Wells had also brought Margot Fonteyn, its prima ballerina, a dancer fit to be ranked with the alltime greats.

Tiaras & Tutus. Five weeks ago, when the Sadler’s Wells company of 65 bundled into two Constellations bound for New York the dancers were weighed down with uncertainty. It was costing $50,000 to bring them on their first visit to the U.S.—a place where ballet, while spreading to every nightclub and skating rink, had lost some of its popular appeal and much of its professional standing. The British Council, which would be called on to make up any losses, had bid them godspeed with the air of men watching $50,0000 or more go up in smoke. Cagey Ballet Importer Sol Hurok had cautiously limited the Sadler’s Wells tour to four weeks in Manhattan and five on the road, and had set Manhattan ticket prices, except for opening night, at a fainthearted $4.20 top. As it turned out, tickets became almost as hard to come by as an aisle seat for South Pacific ($6 plus scalper’s fee).

Night after night the Met was packed to the fire-limit (for an alltime record ballet box-office gross of $256,000). In four weeks, Margot Fonteyn and Sadler’s Wells had restored as much glitter to Britain’s tarnished tiara as any mission the English had sent abroad since the war. In London, cartoonists put Prime Minister Clement Attlee, Ernie Bevin and Sir Stafford Cripps* into tutus, hinted that they might do well to make their next visit to the U.S. on tiptoe.

This week, as the company gave its last Manhattan performance and headed out into the U.S. and Canada, tickets for all their road-trip appearances (in Washington, Richmond, Philadelphia, Chicago, East Lansing, Mich., Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal) were already sold out.

Luck & Coordination. In a way, the Sadler’s Wells company was blessed with luck. It had arrived in Manhattan at a time when the theater was at its lowest ebb since the war. The hits of last fortnight, Maxwell Anderson’s and Kurt Weill’s Lost in the Stars, and the Lunts in I Know My Love (see THEATER) had not yet opened. Sadler’s Wells was the first smash of the 1949-50 entertainment season.

But like most genuinely successful enterprises, Sadler’s Wells had a lot more than luck. It had a hard-driving director in Ninette de Valois, a graduate of Serge Diaghilev’s great Ballet Russe. It had a corps de ballet drilled down to the last pas de chat, an ensemble built on the theory that it is as important to have a well-coordinated team as a great star. To put on the great “white ballets”—the classics that England’s Royal Opera House company has made its specialty—it had to have both. Says U.S. Choreographer George Balanchine: “When you dance in a short skirt, a tutu, you have to be very well trained, very precise. It’s like a coloratura singing Mozart; she has to sing every note. In classical ballet, legs are coloratura.”

Prime & Proportion. In brown-eyed, British-born Margot Fonteyn, Sadler’s Wells had its coloratura. Her perfectly proportioned ballerina body (5 ft. 4 in., 112 Ibs.), her effortless grace and technique had U.S. ballet connoisseurs and critics going back for comparisons to such ballet immortals as Anna Pavlova, Olga Spessivtzeva and Tamara Karsavina, the sometime partner of the great Nijinsky. Just behind Fonteyn were two other fine dancers who could take her roles: tall, handsome Beryl Grey, 22, and flame-haired, 23-year-old Moira Shearer, dancing star of the British film The Red Shoes (which has had a spectacular run of 13 months on Broadway).

On the masculine side the company was weaker. At 40, Choreographer-Dancer Robert Helpmann seemed past his prime as a soloist—although as a danseur noble he showed off the sparkling Fonteyn like a diamond ring. Handsome Michael Somes, 32, had had his career interrupted by four years in the British army during the war.

Castles & Caves. U.S. ballet fans, awaiting the arrival of the English company, had been eager to see Sadler’s Wells’ modern English ballets—with choreography by De Valois, Helpmann and Frederick Ashton. Among the best of these were De Valois’ animated chess game, Checkmate, her Rake’s Progress (after Hogarth’s famous drawing sequence) and Ashton’s gay Wedding Bouquet and impish Façade (to music by William Walton). They were performed with a brittle wit and a steely stylishness.

But, as expected, the company’s real successes were its full-flavored, full-length performances of the three-and four-act ballet classics, the Tchaikovsky-Ivanov Swan Lake and the Tchaikovsky-Petipa The Sleeping Beauty, which call for almost as much pantomime as dancing.

In The Sleeping Beauty, the Met’s huge stage was turned into a fairyland of castles, caves and gardens. For three hours, through a prologue, three acts and a wedding (only the last part is familiar to most U.S. fans), audiences sat enthralled while Princess Aurora was christened, cursed by the wicked fairy, and put into the long sleep from which she is awakened by the prince’s kiss. The third-act duet by Fonteyn, the princess, and Helpmann, the prince, never failed to stop the show. In Swan Lake, few fans had ever seen anything so magnificent as Margot (Queen of the Swans) and her flock (the corps de ballet) huddling and quivering in terror before the evil magician.

“The Same Size Type.” The question many a wondering watcher—and many an envious U.S. dancer—wanted answered was: how had the English accomplished so much in such a short time? The English had been importers and eager spectators of ballet ever since Handel brought Marie Sallé to London in 1733; she shocked a critic into exclaiming that “apart from her corset and petticoat she wore only a simple dress of muslin draped about her in the manner of a Greek statue.” But the British had had a ballet company of their own for only about 20 years.

A big part of the answer was tiny, Irish-born Dancer Ninette de Valois, who left Diaghilev’s Ballet Russe in 1926 resolved to found a British ballet. At first, Ninette and her little troupe danced for a few ballet enthusiasts and for operas at the Old Vic. But a real break came in 1931 when Ninette & Co. got a permanent home and school at the new Sadler’s Wells Theater** a slummy section of East End London.

Their first program, played to an audience half-skeptical of anything in ballet that was not Russian, was “very scrappy.” They did “six short things” with eight dancers and an orchestra of 20. Their first Sleeping Beauty (1939) Frederick Ashton recalls as a “belowstairs version. Everything was puny and skimped; the king and queen looked like the cook and butler dressed up.”

Their greatest attraction was the brilliant Alicia Markova (real name: Alice Marks), whose Giselle was one of the best since Pavlova. But De Valois’ goal was more than just to have a star served by a corps de ballet; she wanted a company “with everyone’s name printed in the same size type.” This was just what she had when Markova pulled out with her partner Anton Dolin to form her own company in 1935. Yet in the back of her mind, De Valois knew she also had a new star—one the world was to hear about as Margot Fonteyn.

Dancing & Deportment. Barely a year before, inspecting her classes, she had spotted a gawky 14-year-old who was stretching her legs with other newcomers at the practice bar. “Who is that little girl?” De Valois asked the teacher. “Peggy Hookham, from Shanghai,” she was told.

De Valois made some inquiries. She discovered that Peggy was born in Reigate, Surrey, on May 18,1919. Her father, Felix John Hookham, was an Englishman, an engineer for the British American Tobacco Co. Her mother was a member of the wealthy Brazilian Fontes family, which made a fortune in coffee.

One evening in 1923, after Peggy and her brother Felix, 7, had been sent off to bed, Felix Sr. had said, “I think it’s time Margaret had some lessons in deportment.” So at four, little Margaret had been dragged, protesting, away from her dolls to Miss Bosutow’s dancing and deportment school in London. By the end of the term she had learned to like dancing and had won the pink sash, given to the girl who had made the most progress. At five, she passed her Royal Academy of Dancing exams.

Child with a Future. Margaret Hookham studied in London until she was eight. Her life was little different from that of most well-brought-up, middle-class English girls, except that she was allowed to spend as much time dancing as she liked, and had a governess to tutor her in her other lessons. In 1927, when the family lived briefly in Louisville while Papa Hookham studied American cigarette-making machinery, Margaret could find no ballet teachers, took tap-dancing lessons instead.

Then the family moved to China. In Shanghai, it was easy to find good Russian teachers. One of them, George Goncharov (who now teaches at Sadler’s Wells), recalls that “directly I saw her I knew she had a ballerina’s head. Her face—she was very attractive with big, dark eyes—seemed to talk to me. She held herself beautifully. She was always somehow intent, as though she had some idea that she knew what she was about.”

Ninette de Valois had seen that too. When Mrs. Hookham asked, “Is it worth spending more money on Margaret’s lessons?”De Valois answered simply: “Nothing that you can spend on that child will be wasted. She has a future.”

When Margaret (having changed her first name to Margot) made her London debut at 14 as one of the 32 snowflakes in The Nutcracker, more experienced Sadler’s Wellsians laughed at the serious little girl who spent half an hour in the wings, warming up for a five-minute role. But Margot was a perfectionist, then as now: she still rehearses the entire third act duet with Partner Helpmann just before each performance of Sleeping Beauty.

She had already adopted her mother’s maiden name (“Who could dance with a name like Hookham?”), still later changed Fontes to Fonteyn (pronounced Fontaine). She worked with Markova in ballet after ballet, studying her technique, watching every motion and emotion.

Margot remembers the day Markova left the company. “Madame [de Valois] was talking to my mother. She said rather casually, ‘I think we’ll drop the classical ballets for a year and next year I’ll put Margot in Giselle.’ I absolutely died of fright.”

Leg In a Cast. She got a chance to warm up. After her 16th birthday, she took over Markova’s role in Ashton’s Les Rendezvous. Already, for the conservative Morning Post, she had “some of that intoxicating quality always associated with the great dancers.” After her first Swan Lake, the Daily Telegraph granted her “that rare title ‘ballerina.’ ” Her first Giselle, at 17, was, said the News-Chronicle, “the partial fulfillment of a promise she makes every time she dances.” By the time she was 20 she had completed the great classical trilogy with Sleeping Beauty. She was a superbly finished dancer; but it took an accident to make her a great artist as well.

One night last fall during a performance in Covent Garden, Margot slipped and pulled a tendon in her ankle. With her leg in a cast, she could not dance again for three months, though she was scheduled to open soon in Ashton’s Cinderella, which she had rehearsed for six months. It was the first time anyone had even seen her crushed. Unable to endure London without dancing, she went to Paris. Moira Shearer danced Cinderella in her place.

The Noisy Fountain. Three months later, Margot came back from Paris with a new warmth. There were rumors that the girl who had been too busy for marriage had at last found time to fall in love. At any rate, she had had a chance to reflect and to mature.

When she made her next appearance of the 1948-49 season, in Cinderella, London saw the change. The Daily Express reported as soberly as it could: “At the end of the lovely pas de deux … so tense was the audience that one could hear the trickle of the tiny stage fountain above the closing notes of the clarinet.” Last April, after a gala performance for Queen Elizabeth, the Evening Standard described the new Fonteyn: “Discarding the steely glitter that has sometimes divorced her from our deepest affections, she danced with simplicity, great feeling and unrivaled grace.”

Piccadilly by Neon. Even now that she has reached a pinnacle of perfection at 30, Margot is still seriously studious. Even after tough evening performances like Sleeping Beauty or Swan Lake she rarely misses the ritual of morning class, where she stretches at the bar like the other dancers. She is completely unaffected—a quality which helps set the atmosphere backstage. Explains Frederick Ashton: “When the prima ballerina doesn’t put on airs, obviously anyone else trying to would only look ludicrous.”

At home, she is the kind of girl of whom one friend says: “She could fill Covent Garden every night in the week for a year, but she could walk through Picadilly Circus with a neon light around her head without one person saying, “There goes Margot Fonteyn.’ ” She has a flat just a block from Covent Garden, filled with period furniture (“mixed”) and porcelain cats, spends much of her free time with her mother, a striking, silver-haired woman whom Margot and her friends have nicknamed “The Black Queen.”

Once in a Blue Moon. Among her closest friends are Helpmann, Ashton, Dancer Pamela May, the U.S. Ballet Theatre’s Nora Kaye and Les Ballets de Paris’ Roland Petit (TIME, Oct. 17). With such people Margot enjoys after-theater suppers or whipping up a home-cooked meal and bringing out some really good wine. One of her extravagances is expensive clothes, but, like most ballerinas, she darns the toes of her own ballet slippers (she brought 40 pairs to the U.S.).

She can be unpredictable. On one of her rare appearances without the company, she told Helpmann she would positively not make a speech at the supper given in her honor after a command performance in Copenhagen. After Helpmann had tactfully told the guests that “Miss Fonteyn is too moved to speak,” she stood up and talked for six minutes. She loves to jitterbug. Helpmann says that after dancing with her in ballet for 14 years, he only really got to know her after jitterbugging with her until dawn one time last year.

But with the severe regimen of a Sadler’s Wells ballerina—an endless round of class, rehearsals and performances—the champagne & lobster life comes only once in a blue moon. Margot would be among the first to agree with Frederick Ashton that “being a ballerina is like being a nun; it is a dedication.”

“She Always Does.” How high in the ballet firmament has Margot’s dedication taken her? Among the great living dancers, who include 46-year-old, Diaghilev-trained Alexandra Danilova and 39-year-old Alicia Markova, Margot’s only rivals now at the peak of their form are Russia’s Galina Ulanova and Olga Lepeshinskaya. Few Westerners have seen enough of the Russians*** (outside the Soviet movie Russian Ballerina) to be able to rank the three. As for comparing Fonteyn with the greats of the past, one enthusiastic London critic cried: “Fonteyn’s technique is four times better even than Pavlova’s.”

Most critics would probably disagree, but none would deny that Margot Fonteyn’s technique was thrilling to watch. In an entrechat, the beat of her feet in the air seems as natural and effortless as the beat of a hummingbird’s wings. She has a Picasso-like purity of line, a dancing attribute which Pavlova once described as “writing in air with a piece of chalk on each hand and foot.” Margot never breaks the line.

She also has another rare gift, which ballet folk call “musicality.” Says Conductor Constant Lambert: “Sometimes I catch a glimpse of her on the other side of the stage and I think for God’s sake she can’t possibly get back to the center in half a bar—but she always does.” She has range: she can be cold and brilliant as a diamond as the classical Queen of the Swans, girlish and pretty as the princess in Sleeping Beauty, heartbreakingly poignant as poor Cinderella. And she has the kind of magnetic presence that rivets eyes to her whenever she is on the stage.

Some connoisseurs say her dancing reminds them of the birdlike grace of Spessivtzeva; others that she takes after Karsavina, who coached Margot in some of her own old roles. Choreographer George Balanchine, who has seen most of them, sums it up best: “In history there will be a Pavlova, a Karsavina, a Spessivtzeva—and there will be a Fonteyn.”

* Sir Stafford himself had written a letter of congratulation (in red ink) to Ballerina Fonteyn, hoping that “the rest of the trip will be a tremendous success and that you will then return to your ‘fans’ here of whom I count myself as one.”

** Named for a 17th Century promoter who discovered a mineral spring on the site, opened a music hall and added a line of ale.

*** One great difference between contemporary Western and contemporary Russian ballet was pointed out by a Russian sailor in the U.S. who was asked if he liked the American Ballet Theatre’s performance of Romeo and Juliet. “Like it?” he replied, “I thought it was awful. When we stage this fight scene, we have not only the whole ballet company of 250 on stage, but the whole school of mime as well. Hundreds of people are lying there dead and it still looks like a whole city fighting. Up there you have eight boys opposite eight other boys.”