Margot Fonteyn, a documentary

[Music] people often ask me what the thing was that made Margot Fonteyn this great star it's like trying to explain genius she had wonderfully specified wonderful expressive arms that godlike physique I mean her proportions were miraculous and all this is added up to a great ballerina [Music] one just loved her from the moment she came on stage till the moment of her last curtain call it was the impact of Fontaine as a dancer as an actress and as a person that move doesn't excited us she had everything [Music] lady a ballerina of great great experience she shaped my career there was a chemistry something worked [Music] [Applause] you [Music] now that I don't dance anymore I live here with my husband on this farm in Panama when I was dancing my career was certainly very long it was 45 years as a professional dancer from shortly before my 15th birthday but to go right back to the very beginning the first house that I can remember was in the London suburb of Ealing and there we were a happy ordinary little family of four with my father mother and my brother feel extreme years old with me nobody can remember why it was suddenly decided when I was about four and a half that I should go to dancing class but for whatever the reason I can well remember still the morning when my mother and I went out of our little front gate and instead of turning to the left and down the hill towards the shops with me hop skipping along beside her as we usually did we turned to the right and then to the right again and after a short distance we came to her house went up the front door and there it said miss grace Osasco teacher of dancing it could have been a better choice because she was really the ideal children's teacher always pleasant encouraging patient and a very very good teacher so that was my first great piece of luck in my ballet career anyway mrs. Astor accepted me as her pupil and my mother bought my first pair of dancing shoes now surprisingly enough I happen to have them right here and I find them rather sweet I just don't know why it was but my mother kept one of these little slippers and mr. Sarto kept the other until when she died they it came back to us and here they are my first dancing shoes yeah I must've been I suppose six about six when one day my mother took me up to London to a matinee performance of the greatest dancer in the world Anna Pavlova and she was dancing the fairy doll [Music] [Music] well I'm ashamed to admit that instead of being bowled over by Anna Pavlova and filled with ambition to be just like her at the great age of six with a few dancing lessons behind me I thought that I could do pretty well too and especially in my favorite dance the Irish water woman's jig I was eight when this happy family existence came to an end because my father accepted a position with a British American Tobacco Company to be a chief engineer for their whole China division overseeing all the factories and for a variety of reasons things that happened later on we were in fact never again to live together as a family of four it was on the 5th of November in 1927 that we sailed from Liverpool across the Atlantic for New York and America was so incredibly different to England there were these skyscrapers in New York the traffic on driving on the other side of the road finally we arrived at Shanghai and the ship moored up in midstream if the Wankel river opposite the famous shanghai waterfront the bump that must have been early probably about me in 1928 and even now the Bund is almost unchanged life in Shanghai was tremendously exciting and different for one thing there was a passel of streets with people everywhere and little shops with strange things in them and then there were the rickshaws in those days one went everywhere by rickshaw pulled by coolies no bicycles then but what my mother had always loved was taking me to dancing class so of course she very quickly was looking for another dancing teacher and she found this English teacher called Audrey King I remember when Mara's mother brought Margo to me I think she was about eight or nine she was a very shy little girl and she worked very hard all the time her potential I thought was good at least because she always could take a perfect wrist position from the very first lesson she had lovely straight legs and a beautiful arrow best line from the very beginning and she was different from the other little girls in the class who were obviously only learning dancing because mother thought it would do them good and just for fun Margo was always serious about what she was doing in fact I think perhaps that is a part of her character to try and do everything to the best of her ability in Shanghai of course it was possible to learn all types of dancing and I know that Margo's mother felt that Margo was going to be a very good character dancer this tropical rain comes down so suddenly goodness me well during our years in Shanghai my formal education took place in the Cathedral school for girls from this British institution you could possibly imagine and now it's a school for the Performing Arts this was once the beautifully manicured playing field [Music] and here is the staircase that used to lead up to the office of our real dragon of a headmistress miss fleet she terrified the pupils and the parents alike [Music] the Oakwood work is still here and the classrooms just as I remember them here is the assembly hall which to my surprise is now a ballet studio with bars and a mirror [Music] I was quite fair at school but quite hopeless at games I hated games I loved swimming and I really enjoyed dancing but it wasn't that important but I did enjoy it I went to various teachers and they all seemed to think that I had Talent well my mother more cautiously thought big fish and small pom that's not so difficult to have a real assessment she would have to take him to London so I was 14 and it was decided I should leave school I'll never forget the last day of term I went to say goodbye to the Dragon Miss Fleet and suddenly I wasn't frightened of her anymore I went up to her office and said well I'm leaving I've come to say goodbye and she was very nice she's of course you took a very dim view of me leaving school at that age but in a gentle way she said you know you'll regret this all your life because you will find yourself an ignoramus among other people and indeed very often I have early in 1934 my mother and I arrived in London and she brought me to the Pheasantry in the kingsroad Chelsea where the princess Sarafine estefy Ava a famous ballerina from the interior Russia had her dancing school and she was the most wonderful teacher I just loved her previously I really didn't like ballet dancing very much because it was rather stiff and rigid and frankly boring and I liked something where I was banging a tambourine and stamping about in heeled shoes I loved that kind of in rhythm and movement and everything but with the princess as stuffy ever she brought all this excitement movement music to Bali and she made all the steps him very easy she was a wonderful teacher but with the typical egoism of youth I didn't stop to think of my mother's special problem which was should she stay with me in London and try to advance me with my dancing or if I really wasn't worth it and didn't have any talent we would go back to Shanghai and continue our life there so my mother felt well she's fine in a dancing school but she has to get a real assessment and she took me to audition at the Sadler's Wells Theatre that was the school for the then Vik Wells Bali young company which much later became Britain's Royal Ballet and its founder and inspired director for many years was Nanette de Valois the presiding genius of British ballet it must be just on 60 years ago and I was sitting in this room watching a Klaus the very young students my I rode round the room suddenly was arrested by little go I turned to the teacher and I said who is a little girl on the Left she told me who she was Peggy Hope as they called her in those days known to us all today as Margaret Fontaine she was an extremely gay happy little girl not at all and grows to being a great ballerina that her ambition was to tap downs and began to dancer and this ambitions my heart was encouraged by the mother tonight try to explain to her that something quite out of the ordinary had entered the ranks of the settlers wells children's school and she was no character dancer no tech dancer but a coming great ballerina her encounter with Frederick Ashton at the beginning was also rather amusing I had told him about her he looked at her he said he wasn't quite sure then they got together in a little dance he was arranging her for girls and after it was over naga went back to lunch her mother and she said to her mother I don't understand that man's choreography but time very quickly cured all those small differences from then on they became an inspiration for each other miss lovely do you think it all happened here at the very beginning of the Sadler's Wells Valley the bezel affair was the first completely new ballet that I ever danced on the solo that Frederick Ashton arranged for me has always remained in my memory although the rest of the valley has long since forgotten recently I taught that dance to Nicola captrick and she is dancing on the very same stage on which it was first performed in 1935 I was 16 at the time how lucky I was that so many of the valleys were choreographed by that genius Frederick Ashton [Music] I suppose the first stab that I ever came in contact with Margot Fonteyn must have been in 1933 or 34 and it was during the rehearsal of ballads I just done for sad as well as the build around him and I think she was replacing somebody and anyway I Fontaine am I didn't sort of get on with her and I found her inadequate and what she was doing and also she seemed to me to have a sort of superior attitude which did appeal to me and and also sort of I sensed a kind of streak of stubbornness and so there I mean anyway they had the rehearsal finished and next time I worked with her seriously within in the part of the bride and busied l'affaire where there again she had a very difficult variation to do which required a tremendous attackin and sharpness in her dancing which Margaret that time didn't have she was rather sort of as I said hurry your feet at a rather buttery means of too soft they didn't have that edge in them but and so I I bullied and bullied and bullied had she got more into her into a state and then finally she burst into tears and rushed up and put her arms around me and said I'm sorry but I'm trying my very best and I can't do any more so then I realized that she'd really conceded to me and that from then on retired we would be able to work together and which indeed we did very happy when I look back those were wonderful years in the 30s that Saddles Wells Theatre it wasn't long after I joined that the prima ballerina Alysia Markova left the company and that gave tremendous opportunities to us more junior dancers [Music] [Music] Oh [Music] [Music] [Laughter] then we had this really superb musical director constant Lambert and the principal dancer was Robert Helpmann who was a man of the theater if ever there was I mean if he was on the stage nobody was going to look at me frankly and so this was the best training I could possibly have had to become a real artist of the valley not just a dancer this amateur film of Giselle in which I'm dancing with Robert Helpmann was taken during a performance at Sadler's Wells Theatre in 1937 [Music] [Music] he was a big evil girl with very intense black eyes and I thought well she's nice too creature but not much to give and when de valois told me that this would be my new partner I must admit that I had certain PS until the first rehearsal this child she was a child then starts to dance and she had this curious quality of making one want to cry and I realized that here was something very very extraordinary not only as a dancer but as a artist [Music] [Music] [Music] our partnership was perhaps one of the most extraordinary experiences in my life because I danced with Fontaine for 25 years and I don't suppose for the first nine or ten of those years I ever spoke to her talk outside the rehearsal room or the dressing I'd say good night what time's the rehearsal in the morning but I never spoke to her I think it was because I thought she was standoffish and she thought that I was standoffish and we never bothered to inquire whether we was tagged offish or not and then I remember very clearly one day walking down the street and I looked at her and said something and she laughed and I remember thinking my goodness she's a friend a great intimate close friend and this is how it remained for the rest of our association our little company used to dance every year in May in the university town of Cambridge which coincided with the undergraduates final examinations but in spite of that they somehow managed to entertain us in an almost continuous floating party which moved to one location to another but never seemed to quite die down for the whole week it was in Cambridge in 1937 that I fell suddenly and instantly enough and it happened in that room up there which was the living room of the digs that I was sharing my closest friends in the valley Pamela May and June brain one evening I returned to find that the party had settled temporarily in our rooms there were quite a few people there already and the lights were very dimmed and in the middle of the room two dark-haired young men were dancing they were dancing the Rumba which at that time was practically unknown in England I was fascinated by the younger of the two men and in fact I watched him of a whole of the rest of the evening the next morning something happened that was really very strange indeed I've never quite been able to explain it I got out of bed and I walked across the room but somehow my feet didn't seem to touch the ground so I went back and I sat on the edge of the bed to think about it and suddenly I remembered this dark-haired young man dancing the Rumba I found out that his name was Tito this is a snapshot of Tito that was taken just across the river there on the grass of the bank I carried that with me everywhere for years I can remember walking with him here by the banks of the river and punting but somehow we were always with a group of people we weren't really alone very much he did manage to tell me that his father was the president of Panama and sometimes he would tell me a little bit about his life in his own country we met each summer the two following years until 1939 when he had already graduated from Cambridge and world war ii broke out that year in September and I didn't see tito again for 14 years the ballet continued to dance in Cambridge but without tito the place had lost its magic for me when the war broke out the government closed all theatres immediately and the company was disbanded nobody knowing what to expect well after two weeks the ballet was recalled to dance for the troops in army camps around the country without the usual Orchestra that we were accustomed to but with two pianos as accompaniment not surprisingly a ballet company wasn't exactly what the troops were hoping to see and quite often they would get up and bang their seats noisily as they walked out of the theater well we didn't care at all we were so happy to be dancing again I wanted it matter in any case very soon we were back again dancing in real theatres in the cities in the theatres in front of the conductor and Justin from footlights so there would be a sign and it would light up saying air-raid alert so all the public would see it and then after time it would say all clear well in the intervening period one would sometimes hear the Bombers the German bombers coming overhead and a bomb would drop room somewhere or other like rats and when you finished your dance and ran off the stage you said where did it fall what does it hit and if it was in London they might say one of the famous wrencher ch's or something like that had been hit but the very curious thing is that I never heard of anybody being seen getting up leaving the theater because there was an area they set their watch the performance we continued everything went on as usual and people thought that was quite normal one of the favorite ballets which we must have danced I think at least three times a week for five years was Frederick Ashton's facade [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] the war in Europe was over in 1945 and the following year it was decided that the Royal Opera House in London should have its own opera and ballet companies for the first time in its history the little Sadler's Wells ballet moved over to the big opera house and this was of course a big advance in fortunes of our company I was really very nervous because this was a very big stage and I rarely almost never danced on a stage that size and I was worried about whether I would be able to project into this big auditorium it was this magnificent new production of the Sleeping Beauty designed by Oliver Messel which opened the first season there it was really beautiful the colors and everything was so wonderful and this opening night of the beautiful opera house all done up and the entire royal family were watching the performance it was really a lovely occassional now it was the same really magnificent production that brought us absolutely unimaginable success when we danced for the first time in America in October 1949 at the old Metropolitan Opera House in New York and that certainly was an occasion never to be forgotten as for me personally I mean I just was terrified I had this long attack of stage fright which really lasted for three months and journalists who tried to interview me in New York when we arrived there found me absolutely mute I was so frightened I couldn't say anything I was so sure of failure I thought this is going to be terrible and I'm going to let down the whole company and Annette Duvall well it's going to be a ghastly thing I was convinced that this was going to happen it was just awful I remember the first night in New York I went to see her dressing in her dressing room and it was the first time I had seen her at all nervous and I said now you mustn't be nervous this is very important she said I'm not nervous for me I'm nervous for the reputation of the British ballet and I watched make her first entrance and I've never heard such applause in my life it was like a gun huge gun and she came to the famous rose Adagio where the princess balances on the hand of all the princes and which came to the third Prince she'd caught such miraculous balance that she didn't even take his hand she just smiled at him well I thought the audience would explode [Music] [Applause] [Music] you [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] Oh [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] you [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] from the moment she came on stage everybody was just in love because apart from her greatness as a dancer her musicality her her dramatic sense there was just her unbelievable love ability that everybody loved her from the moment she appeared from behind the colonnades in act 1 Sleeping Beauty through her final curtain calls no matter what she was dancing she was just overwhelming in fact I have to confess and I never actually told this to Margo years later when we became friends she is the only performer in my 40 odd years of going to various kinds of plays operas ballets etc am I ever stood outside on the street outside of the stage door just to catch a sight up and it would never have occurred to me to intrude upon her autograph but just to look at her in real life after the thrill of seeing her on stage was something I had to do New York for me is always a city of beauty and excitement and over the years the city has brought me great happiness and great success during that first visit I was still totally unsophisticated and shy somehow I just couldn't believe that I could have become a big star overnight it seemed so strange and finally two things did impress me and make me realize that something had changed completely the first was when the magazine's Time and Newsweek both came out in editions with my picture on the cover I thought that it was something that only happened to heads of state or something I was simply dumbfounded by it and perhaps even more impressive was when one day Robert Helpmann took me to see his great friend Katharine Hepburn well of course I thought I stood on the doorstep there with Bobby as he rang the bell and I thought I'm going to meet this great star and what would I be able to say to her or something like that I was like a little girl and suddenly captain happened herself open the door and immediately said oh I'm so happy to meet you and I thought no it's the other way around I've nobody and afterwards I thought about that a lot and so gradually I came to accept that I was somebody and yet it's funny to think that um I was already 30 years old but I still had no real sense of my identity unless I was in the ballet on the stage leaving the stage door or whatever as long as it was balli I knew who I was it was on our third New York season that I was sitting in my dressing room putting on my makeup for the Sleeping Beauty again and the stage doorman knocked to the door came in and he said a gentleman just left his card for you dr. Roberto e-eddie US ambassador for Panama to the United Nations Sun was knock on the door and in came Tito with a friend and he sat down on the city as usual not saying anything very much it just stared at me he left saying he would telephone me the next morning well he did indeed telephone the next morning it was rather early he said in his sort of crap mumbling way he said I'm afraid I have to go back to Panama unexpectedly my plane leaves at midday so order me some breakfast and I'm coming round in 20 minutes well that threw me off a bit because I wasn't used to waking up early in the morning anyway but I ordered the breakfast of course and Iran came Tito and he sat cross-legged on the floor of my room as he used to do when I was in my dressing room in Cambridge and it transpired that of course he was married and he had three children so we gossiped little but this and that and old days and people he knew in Cambridge and suddenly he said you know you're going to marry me and be very happy I was sort of puzzled by this whole thing of Tito because it was very hard for me to recognize in this rather fat person the teacher that I had known as a very slim boy in Cambridge but he would keep appearing in all the cities where we were dancing Sunday turn up in Philadelphia then he'd turn up in Boston or something rather like this but still I just wanted to get a loan and away and have time to think because I was working very very hard and and I wanted to have some time to myself to think about this matter we were married in Paris in February 1955 of the Panamanian council now the office was extremely small and in fact we hadn't invited close even some close friends but when I got there the room was packed with people and masses and masses of cameras and movie cameras and everything were lined up in a huge battery behind the Consul General max automata was marrying us and my parents even couldn't get near to us it was an awful mess but afterwards we had a beautiful reception and we went off for a honeymoon in the Bahamas when we got back to London two weeks later Tito became Panama's ambassador to the court of son James so suddenly there I was with an embassy instead of a little flat I've been living in before with all these diplomatic duties at the same time trying to get to my classes my rehearsals and do the performances and then we would entertain at supper our performs and it was really difficult but wonderful and for the first time in my life I knew who I was Tito specialized in marine law one of his clients was out of stock analysis and that meant that we frequently were entertained on Onassis yacht the Christina I took this film myself the most memorable occasion was a cruise with Sir Winston and lady Churchill on board and to be close to these two great great people was just so thrilling [Music] molasses was very fond of his daughter Christina [Music] Maria Callas was on the yacht with us on Asus was always in a very good humour he was a wonderful host it was about two years after we were married that Tito started talking about the revolution he wanted to make him Panama it seemed that there were certain changes that he felt his country really needed anyway and of course he had to resign as ambassador before he went off down to Panama and it happened that I was on wrongish Australian tour and when it finished it was my holiday from the Bali Tito telephone and said please meet me at the Yacht Club in the Canal Zone so I waited here and after a while very calm is strolling down came Tito and we boarded a little launch called the NOLA and we went out to sea and this was the beginning of five sort of absolutely idyllic days when we were just sailing around these islands but it was also interspersed with meeting up with a shrimp boat I'm glad now that I had my camera with me to remind me of those strange days somehow or other some of the arms had arrived in Panama in the false bottom of a little dinghy and this dingey was being towed when due to the weight of the arms it sank now it sank in shark-infested waters never was in a bit of a tizzy until a splendid captain we had said oh I don't mind sharks at all and he dived in and he got the thing up and they broke open the bottom on this head boot and they unpacked all these guns and ammunitions and things which are stacked all around on the deck but there was one morning when the shrimp boat and our little launch were together in a tiny Cove on one of these islands and very early a plane circled round well that was the police plane and they had discovered us and I said what will happen if you come back to Panama so he said I'll be arrested and Tito clambered aboard the shrimp bird and in what seemed no time at all there's a simple things a speck in the distance he'd said he would try to get to Costa Rica which is the next country coming but we were to go back to Panama Tito had said please go slowly as a decoy so they won't know which ship of the two he would be in and what was unnerving was that for a lot of a time there was one of these planes was circling around up in the sky watching us and I found that very discomforting anyway finally we got back sort of towards evening to the Yacht Club and I stepped out onto the pier not a soul in sight nobody waiting to arrest me and everything was fine but later that night I went across the family and then I was staying some friends and later that night I was working up and just gone to bed actually and the hostess came and knocked on the door and so I'm terribly sorry she was in tears I'm afraid you have to get up they want to take who police want to take you for questioning so I got up and there I got into the car with max automat who two years before had been the Consul General in Paris and had married us and he was frightfully upset he had to take me to the police station and this great big door opened and I went in and door clanged behind me and I was there waiting for questioning so they took me to what seemed to me like a sort of VIP cell it was upstairs on the first floor something had a little private bathroom on the side and there was a bed and on the bedside tables imposed some roses in it and the select tenant said oh the governor of the jail put the roses he grows them himself and he ordered them to be put in your room so everything was very nice except he locked the door when you enter finally they did ask me these questions I said as little as I could about who any of the other people were and then they took me a bit later into a car straight from jail into a car and out I was deported with a ticket to Miami and there I was from Miami I took a plane to New York and when I arrived there it was the most incredible thing all these press were at the bottom of the steps down from the plane trend is horde of people and cameras and everything and when I stepped out and went down I thought well I really ought to enjoy this I mean how many times says it's huffin to an ordinary citizen fine if you're a head of state or something like this but this is never going to happen to me again so I sort of went down the steps and they had a press conference in the air for you trying to get me to say something I gave rise to Walsh Oliver I presume that something has happened in Panama in last 10 days you were in jail my other things I was in jail and you cried about all those things I am NOT going to say anything and then one afternoon a friend for one of the press agencies telephoned to say he just had heard that Tito had taken asylum in the Brazilian Embassy in Panama so that was a tremendous relief uh and it was about four weeks later that he was allowed to travel down to Brazil and of course I rushed down immediately we were reunited at the airport in Rio de Janeiro after a couple of weeks holiday we went back to London where I was to prepare for the next Bali season and that season brought me my favorite of all roles in the Bali Ondine it was a three-act Bali by Frederick Ashton and my role was that of a water nymph it fitted me like a glove I loved going on Dean because somehow it seemed to be a full role which she finally created herself I mean it wasn't like the like the scene which is a road taking on after hundreds be redundant this was absolutely her creation I mean she was particularly marvelous and when she comes to life and she sort of sees her shadow for the first time oh that was incredibly indicated and and completely convincing which had this extraordinary quality of being [Music] Oh Oh [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] you [Music] [Music] you [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] in 1961 our company went to dance in Russia as part of an exchange visit between the Kirov ballet from Leningrad and we arrived there the Kirov Theatre used to be the famous Mariinsky Imperial theater so when I came to dance the Sleeping Beauty on that hallowed stage I was so frightened I was so nervous then there would be all these old Russian dancers and teachers and people in the audience and I'm always terribly self-conscious when I know that there's somebody very distinguished in my profession sitting watching me I suddenly I have two left feet and steps that I can always do perfectly fail it's just terrible so I'm afraid that I dance pretty badly and Sleeping Beauty at least it seems so to me but very fortunately I had in the repertoire Ondine and this new ballet they absolutely loved and so that kind of restored my confidence a bit but generally I would say in Leningrad and in Moscow where we again did the Sleeping Beauty I I don't think that I danced my best on that Russian tour which I'm sorry was the only time I've ever danced in Russia while we were in Leningrad the rumors came that one of the Kirov ballets best dancers had defected as he was going to arrive in London for their season at the Opera House it was all very quiet and sort of hush-hush but when we got back to London we learnt that he was indeed one of the young most brilliant dancers that they had his name was Rudolf Nureyev and he was 23 years old and by then dancing with a company in Paris now Meital Soames with whom I had been dancing for the last ten years ever since Robert Helpmann had left the company had decided to retire after Russian visit a lot of people thought even if they didn't say so that at 42 it would be quite a good idea if I did the same and probably I would have done if it hadn't been that Nannette de valois invited nor EF to dance Giselle at the Opera House a a few months later in February I think it would have been 1962 and then she said to me one day well Nureyev is going to dance Giselle would you like to dance it with him she offered it to me first as it were I immediately thought he's 23 and 42 that's going to be like mutton dancing with lamb and I thought it was pretty awful so I said well I I would like to think about it and I did think about it and I suddenly thought well he's going to be the big sensation all this season I'm if I don't dance with him I will be absolutely a back number nothing because everybody will rush to the Nureyev performances when somebody else will be dancing them with him so I took my courage in both hands and I said yes I'll do two zel with Maria [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] you [Music] you [Music] you [Music] you in retrospect I believe that our partnership wouldn't have been such a great success where it not for the difference in our ages because what happened was that I would go out on the stage thinking who is going to look at me with this young lion leaping 10 feet high in the air and doing all these fantastic things and then Rudolph had really a deep respect because I was as older very famous established ballerina and he felt a bit well when I'm on the stage behind beside her who's going to look at me so it sort of charged the performance that we were both going out there inspired egged on as it were by the other one and also with absolutely the same objective about what this performance should produce and somehow it just worked after first two rehearsals of Giselle Margo started to trust me and things went very smooth and every rehearsal it was like a performance I remember corps de ballet people crying during rehearsal at tears running down their cheeks those performances of Giselle they became a historic event then Margo asked me to do Swan Lake the curve I flew in from Denmark and I sat in Madame's box and I watched first act and I suddenly see extraordinary thing there's a in the first act when Prince meets or debt they have a mind they start gesticulating I did I wasn't trained like that in Russia it was a great shock to me and I came to her and I said well it was so beautiful and that you did mime so well but I couldn't find place for myself I can't do that performance I'll destroy it and she said just you try then how about I agreed to dance with her Swan Lake I couldn't refuse and we start to work and wasn't as smooth as Giselle we had a lot of arguments and differences and suddenly she talked that one moment that her first one Lake was 1938 that was my birthday so I start to laugh and however we worked out a version and when we went on stage all differences all arguments were forgotten we become one body one soul we moved in one way where it was very complimentary every our movement of every head movement there were no more cultural gaps age difference we've been absorbed in characterization we became the part and public was enthralled I think only because we were in thrall with each other and with what we did with the role first thing she taught me it was great professionalism she had the way she worked her walk is very thorough but get out do it do it well and have a good time don't linger get on with it it was very lucky for us to have those glorious years she became a very very great friend of mine she to me she is a part of my family that's all what I have only her [Music] by travelpod member [Music] [Music] in 1964 teachers in my life changed dramatically I had no idea until I reached his bedside of the terrible gravity of the situation the doctors said that a bullet had lodged against his spine and they couldn't be sure whether this might cause paralysis so I was by his bedside as much as I could possibly be and after three days when the doctor was making an examination of him I saw that he shook his head and I thought well that it seems as bad news of course at that point all the doctors people in the hospital knew that most likely this spinal injury would be for life and he would be paralyzed that was something that I I suppose wasn't prepared idea that I wasn't prepared to accept in my mind at that time so I just didn't really believe it in fact four months I didn't believe it until I was able to face the idea but as soon as possible the doctors in Panama thought it best to send him to the best rehabilitation hospital which is in England at Stoke Mandeville so he was sent on the plane with a doctrine Andersen all kinds of people with him and he arrived at Stoke Mandeville and clearly they were going to look after him exceedingly well there so I felt reassured by that but unfortunately I wasn't able to cancel all my engagements it wasn't a time that I could suddenly just cut everything and I had to leave two days after his arrival I had to leave for the Spoleto Festival in Italy and so I went off heavy-hearted with my mother and after he'd been in Stiletto two days early in the morning there was a telephone call from the hospital for me to return immediately well of course my heart sank completely but still arrive back in London at the airport our Sherpa was there to meet us and I said how is it how is it he said well the last radio bulletin said he's still alive but he was in a coma so silly to cry but I'm really still so affected by it so when I got there he was in a coma and he remained in a coma for three days and we were watching watching the doctors haven't any idea how he would be if he came out of it because they said that he had had a temperature of 108 which doesn't exist on the thermometer and so they had never seen somebody survive this they didn't know how he might come out of it but obviously they expected his brain would be affected so slowly slowly he came back to consciousness he but his speech also is affected it was very difficult to understand the doctor said does he appear to be as he was before I said well yes I think so and extraordinary miracle of miracles although he was paralyzed and couldn't speak and very little only with a whisper his brain returned completely brilliant as it always was his memory and everything and that is the finally that is the most important thing about a person it's their brain and there was Tito in a way not changed at all miss Bromley was the chief physiotherapist and the head of a rehabilitation department when Tito arrived at Stoke Mandeville and he stayed there for two years so she really saw his condition at that time when such a patient with great disabilities returns home the families has to make many adjustments for example someone has to get up every night and turn the patient once at least and maybe two or three times but it concentration has to gradually turn from disability to ability and the fact that Tito after nearly 25 years so Fateh able to manage his farm and travel all over the world is largely due on shore to his own indomitable spirit and Margo's constant care [Music] Dido had been shot at the end of an election campaign and as anyone in politics knows very well campaigns clean everybody right out of money so that obviously wasn't a time when I could even consider dropping my career and he had been in the hospital continuously in the ballet Kenna fact Mellon choreographed Romeo and Juliet in which I was to dance and this was yet another of the great choreographers that I had a chance to work with it was wonderful really because by that time we were able to persuade the doctors to let Tito go by ambulance up to the Royal Opera House and to watch the performance and you could just imagine my emotion when I was dancing there in his first performance and Tito was sitting in his wheelchair in the box watching [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] you [Music] [Music] well for a variety of different reasons it turned out that I went on dancing for quite a number of years and all this time I was very conscious that once I would drop the most difficult ballet from my repertoire my stamina level would drop accordingly and then the next bounce over go all the way down the line so I was very anxious to keep dancing the difficult things as long as I could and the ballet that I had always found very very exacting the most exacting tiring and difficult all together in fact the only ballet three-act ballet that I had never felt able if necessary to dance twice in the same day and that was swirling [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] on my 60th birthday there was a gala at the Royal Opera House to celebrate my retirement for this Frederick Ashton choreographed especially a little dance that was still within my powers and he himself joined me on the stage in the last few bars of the music and we walked off together arm in arm that was the first and last performance of that dance it was called salut d'amour [Music] you [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] you [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] Oh [Music] a kiss from Frederick Ashton the greatest choreographer of our time now that my dancing days were over it was natural to expect that the big spectacular events in my life were also at an end and out of the blue came an invitation to be Chancellor of the University of Durham in England the installation my installation took place in Durham Cathedral one of the most beautiful in England and as I made my entry at the head of my procession which was the last of four processions trumpets played a fanfare written specially in my honor [Music] by the authority of the University I confer on you the degree of Doctor of Science honoris causa [Music] teto had always wanted a cattle farm and now that at last I was free to live with him we bought this farm in Panama and here we built our own little house [Music] this is the raw nursing mother too [Music] is this one of our own home projects this one yes bread here [Music] that's a symbol for sure that one the white face this little baby white face and white diamond question reading on yes to get finally to get a very high quality of mother Emma [Music] I didn't [Music] [Music] so that's the story of my life so far and I can't help thinking that when that little girl walked a few hundred yards to her first dancing class she couldn't have imagined on what a long long journey she was embarking [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music]

Channel: MissViale

Views: 534,507

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Id: 95N4J7B2XWI

Length: 87min 40sec (5260 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 10 2018