Word: ballerina
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...witnessed the first successful attempt in years to return elegance and the classical spirit to the Western ballet. Both had been brought to the U.S. by England's Sadler's Wells Ballet. With its gifts, Sadler's Wells had also brought Margot Fonteyn, its prima ballerina, a dancer fit to be ranked with the alltime greats...
Prime & Proportion. In brown-eyed, British-born Margot Fonteyn, Sadler's Wells had its coloratura. Her perfectly proportioned ballerina body (5 ft. 4 in., 112 Ibs.), her effortless grace and technique had U.S. ballet connoisseurs and critics going back for comparisons to such ballet immortals as Anna Pavlova, Olga Spessivtzeva and Tamara Karsavina, the sometime partner of the great Nijinsky. Just behind Fonteyn were two other fine dancers who could take her roles: tall, handsome Beryl Grey, 22, and flame-haired, 23-year-old Moira Shearer, dancing star of the British film The Red Shoes (which...
Then the family moved to China. In Shanghai, it was easy to find good Russian teachers. One of them, George Goncharov (who now teaches at Sadler's Wells), recalls that "directly I saw her I knew she had a ballerina's head. Her face-she was very attractive with big, dark eyes-seemed to talk to me. She held herself beautifully. She was always somehow intent, as though she had some idea that she knew what she was about...
...16th birthday, she took over Markova's role in Ashton's Les Rendezvous. Already, for the conservative Morning Post, she had "some of that intoxicating quality always associated with the great dancers." After her first Swan Lake, the Daily Telegraph granted her "that rare title 'ballerina.' " Her first Giselle, at 17, was, said the News-Chronicle, "the partial fulfillment of a promise she makes every time she dances." By the time she was 20 she had completed the great classical trilogy with Sleeping Beauty. She was a superbly finished dancer; but it took an accident...
...seriously studious. Even after tough evening performances like Sleeping Beauty or Swan Lake she rarely misses the ritual of morning class, where she stretches at the bar like the other dancers. She is completely unaffected-a quality which helps set the atmosphere backstage. Explains Frederick Ashton: "When the prima ballerina doesn't put on airs, obviously anyone else trying to would only look ludicrous...