SELECTIVE RETROSPECTIVE 
"How did it come about that the most famous dancer England has ever produced was deceived and betrayed by those closest to her; of how a little girl called Peggy Hookham, brought up in Shanghai, told her mother she would one day become the greatest dancer in the world; and of how, in spite of being almost unable to walk, she was still performing when she was 67?
Although she died of cancer, in the end she was living in a mud-hut in the middle of the Panamanian jungle, with a corrugated iron roof, no running water, no electricity, no telephone, surviving on cornflakes, penniless and alone, even to the extent that she was buried at first in a pauper’s grave. It is the stuff of fiction – except that it is true.
Telling this appalling story, apart from Margot herself, are Monica Mason, sometime Director of the Royal Ballet, Beryl Grey, Antoinette Sibley and Lynn Seymour, former Prima Ballerinas of The Royal Ballet, Georgina Parkinson, Ballet Mistress of the American Ballet Theatre, Anthony Dowell, David Wall and Donald MacLeary, her former dancing partners, John Tooley, General Director of Covent Garden (1970-88), Roland Petit her lover and choreographer, Peter Wright, former Director of the Sadler’s Wells Royal Ballet, Meredith Daneman and Keith Money, her biographers, Constant Lambert, one of Fonteyn’s first lovers, Rudolph Nureyev, Ninette de Valois (founder of The Royal Ballet), Robert Helpmann, her partner before World War II, Frederick Ashton, her greatest choreographer, Phoebe (Fonteyn’s sister-in-law) and Fonteyn’s mother, known to everyone as ‘BQ’, The Black Queen.
Among the ballets featured are: ‘Swan Lake’; ‘Giselle’; ‘The Sleeping Beauty’; ‘Marguerite and Armand’; ‘The Nutcracker’; ‘Les Sylphides’ and of course ‘Romeo and Juliet’ with Nureyev. "
- Tony Palmer
Tickets £8
17th May Day Pass (6 Films): £25 Only - applied automatically when you book all 6 films.
