0:00:09 > 0:00:12What we are about to see is rare.
0:00:12 > 0:00:15Highlights from a very special performance of The Sleeping Beauty,
0:00:15 > 0:00:18created especially for the BBC television
0:00:18 > 0:00:21and shown live in 1959.
0:00:21 > 0:00:26Choreographed by Petipa to Tchaikovsky's ravishing music.
0:00:26 > 0:00:31Sleeping Beauty was first premiered in St Petersburg in 1890.
0:00:31 > 0:00:35There's a wonderful period charm with this production.
0:00:35 > 0:00:38A sense of drama and theatricality.
0:00:38 > 0:00:41Especially in the mime that helps tell the story,
0:00:41 > 0:00:45like when she pricks her finger or she dies.
0:00:46 > 0:00:47Or she sleeps.
0:00:55 > 0:01:01Margot Fonteyn had an ability to bring the audience in,
0:01:01 > 0:01:05they couldn't take their eyes off her as soon as she appeared on stage.
0:01:05 > 0:01:08I think it was very much down to her musicality and her phrasing,
0:01:08 > 0:01:13but, of course, the most beautiful symmetry with her arms and head.
0:01:14 > 0:01:18As a young dancer in the Royal Ballet Company, I was very fortunate
0:01:18 > 0:01:21to have been coached by Margot for a couple of rehearsals.
0:01:21 > 0:01:25I was expecting her to be technical
0:01:25 > 0:01:27and pull every step apart,
0:01:27 > 0:01:31but she was very much into how I told the story through the steps.
0:01:31 > 0:01:34All I was obsessed with was whether I could balance long enough,
0:01:34 > 0:01:39whether I could do enough turns, she said it had nothing to do with that.
0:01:39 > 0:01:42If you can't tell a story, then it's not worth being on the stage.
0:01:42 > 0:01:46It helped me in everything and I've never, ever forgotten what she said.
0:01:54 > 0:01:58MUSIC: "Sleeping Beauty - Ballet Op.66" by Tchaikovsky
0:20:12 > 0:20:19THUNDERCLAP ECHOES