Celebrating Partnerships
This competition has celebrated the importance of partnerships from the beginning. It celebrates the partnership between music and movement, dancer and audience, student and teacher and the perfect partnership, Dame Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev who between them created the most celebrated of ballet partnerships and who this competition is named after.
Rudolf Nureyev
Born in Irkutsk, in southern Siberian Russia, Rudolf Nureyev studied at the Leningrad Choreographic School, and became a soloist with the Kirov Ballet. Whilst touring with the Ballet in 1961, he dramatically obtained political asylum in Paris, and became an Austrian citizen in 1982. Nureyev was then invited to make his London debut at the annual gala organised by Margot Fonteyn for the then Royal Academy of Dancing. He made his debut at Covent Garden with the Royal Ballet in 1962, and became Fonteyn’s regular partner. At 23 he gave her at 42 a new burst of energy and understanding; she inspired him and helped him settle down. His virtuosity and expressiveness made him one of the greatest male dancers of all time, in both classical and modern ballets. He began to choreograph and dance for many European companies, and became ballet director of the Paris Opéra Ballet (1983-9) and principal choreographer (1989-92). In his later years he also began to conduct, leading orchestras in the USA, Europe, and the former Soviet Union. His autobiography, Nureyev, appeared in 1962.
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Margot Fonteyn
Dame Margot Fonteyn de Arias, originally Margaret Hookham born in Reigate, Surrey, SE England, UK. She joined the Sadler’s Wells Ballet (later the Royal Ballet) in 1934, where she made her first solo appearance in The Haunted Ballroom, and became one of the greatest ballerinas of the 20th-c, both in classical roles and in creating new roles for Sir Frederick Ashton. A new partnership with Rudolf Nureyev in the 1960s at the age of 42 extended her performing career, and they became the best known dancing partnership in the world. In 1954 Margot Fonteyn was elected President of the Royal Academy of Dance on the retirement of Dame Adeline Genee; a position she held until her death in 1991. She married Roberto Emilio Arias (1918-89), then Panamanian ambassador to the Court of St James in London, in 1955, and was created a dame in 1956.
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