FONTEYN'S FAVOURITES

New Zealand Listener, Volume 30, Issue 759, 5 February 1954, Page 9

FONTEYN'S FAVOURITES

W HEN Time put Margot Fonteyn on its cover a little over four years ago it described her as "a dancer fit to be ranked with the all-time greats." Miss Fonteyn had gone to the United States a few weeks before with the Sadler’s Wells Ballet, a trip which looked like a 50,000-dollar gamble. As it turned out it was a tremendous success. Night after night the Metropolitan Opera House was packed, and when the company went on the road tickets for all their performances were already sold out. Margot Fonteyn, whose grace and technique had American ballet critics going back to Pavlova and Karsavina for comparison, had made her London debut 16 years before as one of the 32 snowflakes in The Nutcracker. Some people had laughed at the serious little girl who would spend half an hour in

the wings warming up for a five-minute role. The point was that even then Margot Fonteyn was a perfectionist. By the time she was 20 she was a superbly finished dancer, though it took an en.forced spell from ballet, after an accident, to turn her into the great artist she is today. : In Ballerina, to be heard com YC stations, Margot Fonteyn introduces ber own ‘choice of music from the ballet. There -are eight programmes, starting with Casse Noisette and Les Sylphides, which will be broadcast from 4YC act 8.20 p.m. on Monday, February 8, and from 2YC at 7.45 p.m. on February 13. Ballet music introduced in other programmes includes Rio Grande, Facade, Swan Lake, The Fairy Kiss, Apparitions, Nocturne, Les Patineurs, Giselle, Carnival, The Spectre of the Rose, Horoscope and The Sirens.