Dance

Margot

The story of England's most famous dancer

Margot
Margot
Margot
Margot
Margot
Margot

With:
Rudolf Nureyev
Frederick Ashton
Robert Helpmann
Ninette de Valois
Roland Petit
Monica Mason
Lynn Seymour &
Beryl Grey

Ballets featured include:
Romeo and Juliet, Swan Lake, Giselle, The Sleeping Beauty, Marguerite and Armand, and The Nutcracker.

This is the story of how the most famous dancer that England has ever produced was deceived and betrayed by those closest to her; of how a little girl called Peggy Hookham, brought up in Shanghai, told her mother she would one day become the greatest dancer in the world; and of how, in spite of being almost unable to walk, she was still performing when she was 67.

It is a story of courage and tenacity, of unbelievable devotion – to her art and to those whom she loved who, in the end, left her penniless, and alone, even to the extent that she was buried at first in a pauper’s grave.

It is the stuff of fiction – except that it is true.

Among those taking part in this film are: the Arias family, Phoebe (Fonteyn’s sister-in-law), Patsy Lady Jellicoe, who knew Fonteyn in Shanghai 80 years ago, Pamela May, who joined the old ‘Vic-Wells’ ballet the same month as Fonteyn in 1933, Monica Mason, Director of the Royal Ballet, Beryl Grey, Antoinette Sibley, Georgina Parkinson & Lynn Seymour, stars of the Royal Ballet, Anthony Dowell, David Wall, Donald MacLeary & Desmond Kelly, her former dancing partners, John Tooley, General Director of Covent Garden 1970-88, Roland Petit, her lover and choreographer, Peter Wright, Director Laureate of the Birmingham Royal Ballet, Meredith Daneman & Keith Money, her biographers, Patricia Foy, the BBC producer of her famous television series ‘The Magic of Dance’, Clive Barnes the dance critic, Robert Gottlieb, the publisher of her autobiography, Joan Thring & Colette Clark, her longtime assistants, and Andrew Motion, the Poet Laureate, whose definitive biography of Constant Lambert sheds much light on one of Fonteyn’s first lovers – as well as previously unseen archival interviews with Rudolf Nureyev, Ninette de Valois (founder of The Royal Ballet), Robert Helpmann, her partner before World War II, Frederick Ashton, her greatest choreographer, and Fonteyn’s mother, known to everyone as ‘BQ’, The Black Queen.

Above all, this is a film about a beautiful woman who still, for most people, is ballet, with music (Prokofiev / Tchaikovsky) which for most people is music; a film about an immensely popular woman, but with a very dark story to tell.