Margot Fonteyn

Where to begin? Margot Fonteyn was one of the best dancers of her time! She was born in England in 1919.Her real name was Peggy Hookham. Heres her story. She spent some of her childhood In China. When she was 14 her family returned to England where she tried out for the Vic-Wells ballet, she made her debut in 1934 as a snowflake in The Nutcracker, her first solo role was the Young Treginnis in de Valois's The Haunted Ballroom. In 1935 Markova, the company's first ballerina left. All of the dancers were scared and worried about who would replace her. Over the next three years it was obvious that it would be she herself. By the time the war started in 1939 Margot had danced Aurora, Giselle, and Odette/Odile, and had already created half a dozen roles for Ashton. After a bad start off she and the choreographer developed a happy relationship which over the next 25 years made most of her greatest roles and his greatest ballets. The company's existence ended with the invitation take up residence at Covent Garden, and their opening night performance of The Sleeping Beauty showed how far margot had become a prima ballerina. The 50s saw her taking on Karsavina's role in The Firebird, and making Ondine and Chloé (left) - the part in which Ashton said he most missed her when she gave up dancing. In 1956 she married Roberto de Arias, a diplomat from Panama. And for a time had to choose between her commitments as both ballerina and ambassador's wife. By 1960, talk of retirement had begun to creep into reviews and interviews. Certainly her career was extended by at least 15 years, and we saw her in many new ballets, usually created to explore the dynamics of the partnership - the most famous probably being being Ashton's Marguerite and Armand. Fonteyn gave her final performance in the early 70s, and retired in Panama to live with her husband, who had been paralysed in a shooting accident. In 1979 the Royal Ballet gave Fonteyn the rare title prima ballerina assoluta. She died of cancer in 1991.

Her elegance made her the perfect example of what we have come to think of as the English style, while her modesty and dignity set the tone for the whole company in its developing years. If this makes her sound too ladylike, though remember that not only has she been described as "the most passionate of dancers", she was also arrested probably more often than the average prima ballerina should be - the most famous times was in July 1967 in Haight Ashbury in San Francisco at the height of "flower power", when a party she and Nureyev had been invited to was raided by anti-drugs police. She was also arrested on one occasion in Panama.

An existing film of hers was made too late in her career to do justice to her technique, but luckily she inspired photographers as well as choreographers and there are hundreds of great photographs to witness to her quality. For a time the fame of her partnership with Nureyev rather outdid the rest of her career, but even had she retired in the early 60s without ever having danced with him, she would still be remembered as the greatest dancer we ever had.