Fonteyn '59: Sleeping Beauty Extended

What we are about to see is rare.

Highlights from a very special performance of The Sleeping Beauty,

created especially for the BBC television

and shown live in 1959.

Choreographed by Petipa to Tchaikovsky's ravishing music.

Sleeping Beauty was first premiered in St Petersburg in 1890.

There's a wonderful period charm with this production.

A sense of drama and theatricality.

Especially in the mime that helps tell the story,

like when she pricks her finger or she dies.

Or she sleeps.

Margot Fonteyn had an ability to bring the audience in,

they couldn't take their eyes off her as soon as she appeared on stage.

I think it was very much down to her musicality and her phrasing,

but, of course, the most beautiful symmetry with her arms and head.

As a young dancer in the Royal Ballet Company, I was very fortunate

to have been coached by Margot for a couple of rehearsals.

I was expecting her to be technical

and pull every step apart,

but she was very much into how I told the story through the steps.

All I was obsessed with was whether I could balance long enough,

whether I could do enough turns, she said it had nothing to do with that.

If you can't tell a story, then it's not worth being on the stage.

It helped me in everything and I've never, ever forgotten what she said.

MUSIC: "Sleeping Beauty - Ballet Op.66" by Tchaikovsky

THUNDERCLAP ECHOES