Margot Fonteyn & Rudolph Nureyev - one perfect partnership, an artistic love affair…

Having spent 2 days in bed with the flu, I woke up today feeling romantic. Yesterday, I watched again an old documentary about one of the most famous couples of all times that shared a sensational partnership...Both were megastars, they shared a very special chemistry creating magic...today I am thinking about love and how it appears in all different shapes, occasions and forms...like in this friendship...

Their backgrounds couldn’t be more different. She was a world famous ballerina, he was a young dancer half her age, defected to the West and had just started his career in the UK having as one of his ambitions to dance with her. They met just at the time when Fonteyn was about to retire, but they danced together from 1962 until 1979 and they became the most glamorous ballet couple of the sixties and seventies. She was 42 and he was 24 when they first danced together, and Fonteyn continued to shine next to him for 17 more years until she made the decision to retire and nurse her then invalid husband at their Panama farm. They danced again one more time after this in 1989, when she was 69 and Nureyev 54.

 

They were famously loyal to each other. Fonteyn would not approve an unflattering photograph of Nureyev, while he said about her: “At the end of 'Lac des Cygnes' when she left the stage in her great white tutu I would have followed her to the end of the world."

Damme Ninette de Valois was the Founder of the Royal Ballet. At the documentary she talks about Nureyev, saying that his impact was in every direction, first his execution, secondary his artistry, and thirdly his longing to learn. He didn’t run away from Russia just because he wanted to get out of Russia, he wanted to find out, to know what was going on the rest of his world, in other parts of the world...

Today, because of him, male dancers were brought at the center and the front of the stage, providing a new role to the male ballet dancer who once served only as support to the ballerina.

Roberta Lazzorini is a member of the Royal Ballet who talks in the documentary about the first time she watched Nureyev and Fonteyn together on stage in “Gisele”. She says: “When the curtain came down, there wasn’t applause, there was complete silence for at least a minute, it was breathtaking...”

He socialized with Gore Vidal, Freddie Mercury, Jackie Kennedy Onassis, Mick Jagger, Liza Minnelli, Andy Warhol and Talitha Pol and was considered to be a loyal and generous friend, but the friendship they shared with Fonteyn was above all.


He made her change the way she performed...she was performing in a new feminine way..that no one had seen before, a very passionate way..They were a rare combination of two chemicals reacting, complete opposites, intensifying each other qualities..

The documentary includes rare filmings from the countless rehearsals they did together. At one point, we see Nureyev sitting and watching Margot rehearsing. The camera is so close that you see the connection between them, total inspiration, love and respect…