Ballerina Margo Fangting: She is lonely than fireworks

Among the great female dancers of the 20th century, there are only a few who have surpassed themselves and become truly epic characters in the history of dance. Anna Pavlova (bringing the paradigm of 19th-century Russian ballerina to the West, it also brought people a vision, a deep desire for women like Sylves—beautiful, soft, elusive. Margo Fangting gave Pavlova's Sylves a woman's body and a British accent. No less than Horazio Nelson , Fangting was the bravest embodiment of the British. Wearing her tiny ballet skirt, rhinestone crown tiara and pink pointed shoes, when the empire is no longer When she existed, Fangting was still a treasure of the empire. In ballets such as " Cinderella ", "Mermaid" and "Margaret and Armand", she became the muse of the choreographer Frederick Ashton. Fangting redefined the classics of the 19th century "Swan Lake", "Sleeping Beauty", and " Giselle " with perfect lines, showing a complete image that can penetrate your inner world with a simple posture.

"Sleeping Beauty"

Meredith Danman captured a side that few people know in his book Margo Fanting: the heartbreak behind the heroine. Danman herself was a professional dancer and the author of four novels, and wrote an authoritative book about the beloved idol of the ballerina around the world. She also captured the noble power emitted by the protagonist on a page of paper, a woman who is so focused, humble, so tenacious, and so passionate about life. Her story is tragic At the end, the same effect as the stage interprets the image.

May 18, 1919, Fangting was born in Regate, Surrey. His father is an engineer. His family is proud of "the lower-class orthodox concept of the middle class and no exception at all", and his mother is Brazilian-Irish. Like all interesting lives, Fangting's life story is the same Colorful.

In this book by Denman, this is the story between a quiet brunette British girl named Peggy and a clever and willful and adorable mother Hilda. Hilda prefers to be called Nita. She sends her magical child who just turned four to the first ballet class. She has raised and supported her daughter for seventy years. Peggy refuses any nutrition, but bakes on toast year after year Bean. Despite the numerous lovers, Fangting didn’t move out of her mother’s protected roof until she was 26. American writer and theater manager Lincoln Colstein once said that for many biography of ballerinas, someone should tell the story of “mother”—because there is almost no exception, behind every great dancer is an awesome mother, and a Floydish father who is far away or non-existent. Theater has always been a place for women without husbands or fathers to seek shelter and grow.

Next is the story of an unlikely group of dreamers who created the British ballet. These dreamers were changed by Sergei Diakirev, the founder of the Russian Ballet and the founder of the British Ballet and decided to cultivate classical ballet in the UK. In the years before World War I, the dramatic visuals introduced in Europe in the years before World War I. With the British ballet star playing the funny clown, Robert Hepman Together, the characteristic of this small group is that it has dedicated British dancers; the talented composer and conductor Constant Lambert laid the musical foundation for British ballet; the motivation of the choreographer Frederick Ashton came from the guidance and motivation of ballet director Ninet de Valois, a woman with steely will and absolute beliefs. It was Valois who placed the hope of British ballet on the shoulders of fourteen-year-old "Little Hookham" in 1933. (Note: Fangting was born with his name Margaret Evelyn Hookham, who used the temporary name Margot Fontes during her first solo dance in 1933, named herself Margot Fonteyn in 1935 and used the name for the rest of her career).

The young Margo Fangting started her life in the background with the same young and precocious puberty that she has proven to the public. At the age of sixteen, Fangting lost her virginity and soon seduced her virginity, Michael Soms, one of her future partners. Then she embarked on a turbulent, passionate and painful relationship with the talented and irritating Constant Lambert. An educated man - who gave his young mistress a copy of Mrs. Chatterley's lover (although Fangting upgraded the book to Ulysses in his speech years later) - Lambert is a witty ghost who returns to prodigal, a terrible drunkard, a eager lover, and a married man. In fact, it was married, then divorced, and then remarried with a third woman. For eight years, the young Fangting had been under his control. She spent more than one late night searching for her drunken lover in London’s back streets.

The first on the left is Constant Lambert

After Lambert, she had a relationship with French ballet director Roland Pettit and dancer Robert Helpmann, and even had "a few days" contact with British novelist Graham Green , but her busy tour schedule suddenly ended all of this. "We never started that thing, like we had little chance to continue," wrote Fangting in a letter to Green. There were two miscarriages along the way.

At the center of Fangting's story (and what she herself emphasized), is Roberto Arias (called Tito, the son of an international law scholar and a major Panama politician), whom she married in 1955 when she was in her thirties. Their marriage presents a charming portrait—like the echo of Herburn’s relationship with Tracy, Carras’s relationship with Onassis, Dussey and Dunnanzhe—a stage goddess who provides solace and humility for a man who doesn’t seem so valuable. But when did love follow the principle of "value"? Perhaps a talented, generous and beautiful woman rarely feels conquered and must create her own sense of submission; while a talented and self-intoxicated man is precisely the ideal foiler of such exquisite novels. Or maybe it was a ballerina who, after years of bottom-up career, could not understand the politics of equality in the bedroom at all.

Fangting first fell in love with Arias in Cambridge, when both of them were only eighteen years old. He was in college and she was dancing in the art theater. Fangting later wrote that "For a woman, it is terrible to love men more than men love themselves more." But after he divorced his first wife (they still have three children), they spent eighteen years of marriage-free life. In his thirty-four-year marriage, Fangting-Arias often lacked many unfaithfulness, but he did not try to hide it, and confronted her impeccable dedication and eventually she had some unfaithful behaviors. Sexy-Son Theory-Suppose a woman is physically driven to love the romantic blank to maximize her son's attractiveness to women-come a one-tip spin. Fangting's mother said the last sentence: "Tito is a child that Margo has never had before."

1964, when Tito was nearly murdered by a political enemy who was said to be a cuckold husband, the bitterness of this love story reached its peak. Numerous gunshot wounds left him in the hospital for a year and a half, unable to move for the remaining quarter of his life. From that day on, Fangting played perhaps the most important role in her life, as the holy wife of a paralyzed playboy. For more than two months, she was like an English "day beauty", pushing Tito's wheelchair, feeding him food, and attracting beautiful girls to be with him.

Fangting sometimes often claims to be tired of her husband, and Tito will cry while watching her dance, but in her locker room they will just say, "You know I don't like ballet.” As close friend Colette Clark, who worked with Fangting at the Royal Dance Academy celebration, said: “People say he was shot and killed was a tragedy. This is certainly not a tragedy, because she got what she wanted. An object that can take care of, love, and bring out all the incredible dedication and strength of her character to the fullest.”

But this is not all Margot's martyrdom. In 1961, just as her career as the chief ballet dancer of the Royal Ballet began its inevitable decline, a young and beautiful Russian dancer flew west in a jet plane, not only rekindled her career but also revived Fangting's career. Rudolf Nureyev (Rudolf Nureyev) was nineteen years younger than her – a truly “sexy son” – but such a partnership quickly turned into legend and consistent. “At the end of Swan Lake,” Nuriev explained: “When she leaves the stage in a white ballet tutu, I follow her to the end of the world. ” We also long to follow her.

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Although the degree of their private life is unclear (he said yes, they did; she said no, they didn't; Danman said yes, they did), there is no doubt that they were in love with each other wildly on stage and off the stage. The inseparable "tea gentleman" who shook hands, cheerful, and giggled like young couples. One can only imagine the comfort this passionate man brought to her in Fangting's imperfect marriage. Some people disapprove of such an alliance, but most people in the world accept their pairing as a huge romance and native force. "He brought her out," De Valois said: “She raised him. "

"Swan Lake" starring Nuriev

mentioned Fangting in his later years, Nuriev said: "That's all for me. Only her. "Their amazing partnership and her re-brilliant career—the world needs them—also paid endless expenses for Tito's care: a few hundred pounds spent in the pool. So Fangting kept dancing as if she had been wearing those "red shoes". In those later years, she showed one of her deepest talents as a dancer: the ability to be completely still. "This is submission, the place where she has the greatest strength," explains eloquent French ballerina Violet Fordy, "waiting in music." She would fill her ears and atrium with music. "Watching such a calm and abundant life in a state of complete tranquility is a state that is different from anyone else, only for the truly great dancers.

when Fangting left her home in Panama On tour of Chile under the Pinochet regime, Anabella Valarino, a socialite with whom Tito had an affair before being shot, would move into the house like his shadow wife and move out before Fangting came back. On the day Tito died in 1989, the secluded woman swallowed a bottle of chlorine and committed suicide. The Arias family closed down Margo in an attempt to prevent her from suffering this final tragic insult. Fangting herself could only live for two more years, because she had been found suffering from a malignant tumor, and one left foot could only be dragged behind. But she refused the suggested amputation; she had reason to be proud of her beautiful legs, and the most perfect woman would not succumb to asymmetry—some lines could not be overcome. Although she left peacefully despite the pain, her beautiful body had been twisted by cancer.

The last bitter note is: Fangting's ashes were not buried in Westminster Abbey as many people imagine, and would rather be buried in the bottom of Tito's grave in a poorly preserved cemetery outside Panama City as she was supposed to. Her stones are the smallest throughout the cemetery, according to Danman. Margo Fangting really brought her humility to the grave.

margo Fonteyn

British ballet dancer Margot Fonteyn 1919.5.18 – 21 1991.2.21), whose stage name is Margaret Evelyn de Arias, has been a dancer in the Royal Ballet (formerly Sadler's Wells Theatre) throughout his career and was eventually appointed as the troupe's designated chief ballet dancer by Queen Elizabeth II. She started ballet training at the age of four. As her father was transferred to China to work, Fangting's study was completed in the UK and China, and she studied under George Goncharov in Shanghai, which helped her continue her interest in Russian ballet. Fourteen-year-old Fangting returned to London and was invited by Ninet de Valois to join the Vick-Willes Ballet School. In 1935, Fangting succeeded Alicia Markova as the chief ballet dancer of the troupe. Vick Wells' choreographer Frederick Ashton wrote a lot of scripts for Fangting and her partner Robert Hepman from the 1930s and 1940s.

In 1946, the troupe was renamed the Welles Ballet in Sadler and moved into the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden. Fangting's most frequent partner in the next decade was Michael Soms. Tchaikovsky's "Sleeping Beauty" became a featured role for Fangting and the troupe, but she is also known for Ashton's ballet, including Symphony Variations, Cinderella, Daphne and Chloe, Ondin and Sylvia. In 1949, Fangting led the troupe to tour the United States and became an international celebrity. Before and after World War II, Fangting performed in a ballet program broadcast on British television, and appeared in the American TV variety show "The Ed Sullivan Show" in the early 1950s, thus enhancing the popularity of ballet in the United States. In 1955, Fangting married Panamanian Roberto Arias and appeared on the NBC TV live-streamed "Sleeping Beauty". Three years later, Fangting and Soms both danced on the TV adaptation of the BBC's Nutcracker. Due to her international acclaim and the demands of many guest artists, the Royal Ballet allowed Fangting to become a freelance dancer in 1959.

1961, when Fangting was considering retirement, Rudolf Nuriev, who was dancing in Paris at the time, defected from the Kirov Ballet. Although he was reluctant to work with him due to his age difference of nineteen, Fangting performed "Gisel" with him on February 21, 1962 during the Royal Ballet premiere. The pair immediately became an international sensation, each pushing each other to the best performance. They are most famous for their performances in classical works such as Pirates, Fairies, Indian Temple Dance Girls, Swan Lake, and Raymondda, where Nuriev sometimes specifically adjusts the choreography to showcase their talents. The pair premiered Margaret and Armand, designed by Ashton for their choreography, and were known for playing the title of "HTM4 Romeo and Juliet " choreographed by Kenneth Macmillan . Next, her husband was shot and killed in an assassination attempt and became a quadriplegic patient, requiring constant care for the rest of his life. Although she danced regularly until the end of this decade, Fangting had entered a semi-retired state in 1972. In 1979, Fangting was officially announced by the Royal Ballet as the company's chief female dancer. After retirement, she returned to Panama to spend the rest of her life writing books, raising cattle and taking care of her husband.

On February 21, 1991, Fangting died of ovarian cancer in a hospital in Panama City at the age of 71. This day happened to be the 29th anniversary of her debut "Gisel" with Nuriev. Fangting and Arias were buried near their home in Panama; on July 2, 1991, a memorial service was held at Westminster Abbey, London. The grief Nuriev was dealing with his health problems in the shadow of AIDS and failed to attend any ceremony.

In 1980, in Fangting's hometown, a statue made by British sculptor Nathan David stood in honor of her. Commissioned by enthusiastic admirers around the world, the statue portrays the outstanding dancer with her favorite character "Anding". The main hall of Durham Building in the UK and the Durham University Student Union Building are all named Fangting Ballroom after her, and the same is true for the hall of Durham University College Hall in Durham Castle. In memory of Fangting, "Margo's Wardrobe", a dance clothing and accessories store, opened in 2005 in Marietta, Georgia, a suburb of Atlanta. In 2007, the "Margo Fonting Ballet Academy" named after her was founded in Pixkill, New York.

In the early 1990s, the fossil plant Williamsonia Margotiana was named after Fangting. She was one of the five "achieving women" selected in a set of British stamps issued in August 1996. In the 1998 film about British cellist Dupree , Fangting was played by stage film and television actor Neri Don Porter. In 2005, Tony Palmer produced a documentary about Fangting for British ITV, titled "Margo". The film includes interviews with several colleagues in the dance industry, Nuriev's personal assistant, and Fangting's brother-in-law Phoebe Fangting. The BBC produced a film about Fangting, based on a biography written by Danman, which was broadcast on November 30, 2009, starring British actor Anne Mary Duff. In 2016, the British Heritage Trust installed a blue plaque on the building where Fangting lived while performing with the Sadler Wells Ballet.

Reprinted from Sohu (Classical Music)