Product Review

Dust jacket notes: "Margot Fonteyn's prodigious career, without parallel in the history of ballet, is here pictured in its entirety for the first time. Never before has so much systematic information been assembled, nor has the majority of the photographs been published previously. Fonteyn: The Making of a Legend presents historians with an invaluable record and general readers with a fascinating panorama; it is also a unique tribute to the prima ballerina assoluta. Keith Money felt the need for a full pictorial biography while working on one of his earlier books, The Art of Margot Fonteyn, which covered only one phase of her work in any detail. It has taken him over three years to compile this present definitive record. Because Fonteyn has never allowed dedication to her art to preclude a full private life, both aspects inevitably overlap and are thus reflected in these pages, beginning with her infancy in Reigate - where a statue is due to be erected in her honour. Every facet of her dancing is covered: her lessons as a child in Ealing; her appearances right up to 1973; her dance partnerships, including those with Robert Helpmann, Michael Somes and Rudolf Nureyev; and influential figures, such as de Valois and Ashton, who appear frequently in these pages. Although Margot Fonteyn has been associated with England's national ballet company since she started her career, her performances have extended far beyond the confines of a single company: no ballerina since Pavlova has enjoyed a reputation so universal. In fact this book shows Fonteyn with no less than thirty-six principal partners in twenty-eight different countries. In 1949, the morning after a New York audience had first seen Margot Fonteyn dance, she was proclaimed by one newspaper as 'the world's only valid legend.' The legend has continued to enchant the world ever since, as this volume demonstrates." Illustrated with nearly 800 photographs.