Volume 51, Number 19 · December 2, 2004
The Art of Pleasing
By Robert Gottlieb
Margot Fonteyn: A Life
by Meredith Daneman
Viking, 654 pp., $32.95
The stories of most great ballerinas, however different their temperaments, are basically the same. They start preparing professionally as children; their lives are ruthlessly and narrowly concentrated on their work; they have a mother to nurture them, fight for them; they inspire a powerful creative personality, who then shapes them (Pavlova had Petipa; Karsavina had Fokine; a dozen or more, from Danilova and Toumanova to Farrell and McBride, had Balanchine); and they find themselves in their forties either finished or hanging on precariously—ballerinas don't age gracefully into character roles and grandmother roles, the way talented actresses can. And they share a quality that, late in life, Margot Fonteyn identified as the one that 'has helped me most': tenacity.
Review, 3823 words
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