MARGOT FONTEYN AUTOGRAPHED PHOTOGRAPH

MARGOT FONTEYN

black and white  photograph 20.5 cm x 25.2 cm

Signed : "Margot Fonteyn Arias"

One of the world's greatest ballet dancers, Dame Margot Fonteyn (1919-1991), born Margaret Hookham in Surrey, England, joined the Royal Ballet (then Sadler's Wells Theatre) as a teenager. By 1939, Fonteyn, whose name had been changed because Britain's popular ballerinas were either Russian or French, was a star. Known for her lyric grace, her fame only escalated with her 1949 tour of the U.S., where she performed Aurora in Sleeping Beauty. In the 1940s, she danced regularly with Robert Helpmann, but it wasn't until 1962, when she was considering retirement, that she was matched with her best known partner, Soviet-born dancer Rudolf Nureyev. On March 1, 1962, Fonteyn and Nureyev debuted in Giselle, and the duo would later originate the title roles Kenneth MacMillan's Romeo and Juliet (Fonteyn and Nureyev also starred in the 1966 film version of the ballet and in the 1967 film adaptation of Swan Lake). In 1955, Fonteyn married Panamanian diplomat Roberto "Tito" Arias, to whom she was wed until his death in 1989. Fonteyn, who was created Dame of the Order of the British Empire in 1956, gave her last performance in 1979.