"Dame Margot Fonteyn, one of Britain's most famous ballerinas, was 'up to her neck' in a coup plot in Central America - along with Fidel Castro, according to government files released today at the National Archives.
Fonteyn, one of the greatest assolutas of the twentieth centuries, was a wonder. Her biography is almost as outsized as her talent. Somehow, then, her involvement in a coup--she was married to a Panamanian diplomat who was part of it, too--doesn't surprise. There is a great photograph of her on stage after she's just been told her husband has been shot during said coup attempt. (He was left quadraplegic; she, I believe, cared for him for the rest of his life.) Not too long ago, the Times of London reported on an exhibition of photographs that documented a young Fonteyn taking part in a wartime ballet troupe.
This is all to say, I have wanted to write a poem on her for ages. I have her autobiography around here somewhere, and when I finally get to it, I will write that poem. Really, I want to do a whole series on dancers/choreographers, like Nureyev, Nijinsky, Balanchine and his girls, Jimmy Slyde, Isadora Duncan, Fred Astaire, Merce Cunningham, Pina Bausch. I have done a few pieces on Martha Graham, but the rest, I am afraid, will have to wait.
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