Margot Fonteyn: A Life Danced for Love, Sacrifice, and Quiet Strength
Margot Fonteyn attended a party in Cambridge with no expectation that her life was about to change. Amid music, laughter, and youthful energy, she found herself dancing a rumba with a wild, dark-haired boy—someone she had never met before and would never forget. That fleeting moment marked the beginning of one of the most dramatic and enduring love stories in the history of classical ballet: the lifelong, turbulent bond between Margot Fonteyn, the first absolute ballerina of the Royal Ballet, and Roberto de Arias, a Panamanian diplomat.
They lost each other and found each other repeatedly, across different cities and different versions of themselves. As Roberto’s diplomatic career accelerated, Margot’s artistic star rose just as swiftly. Their connection was intense and deeply emotional, yet constantly interrupted by distance, professional obligations, and the looming threat of war. Love existed in fragments—letters, reunions, goodbyes.
Then came the final rupture. In the last summer before the war, Margot learned that Roberto had been living with an American woman in Paris. For her, that revelation was final. She ended everything.
The separation lasted fourteen years.
In 1953, the past returned without warning. As Margot prepared to step onto the stage in New York to perform Tchaikovsky’s Sleeping Beauty, she received a brief note requesting a meeting. It was signed: Dr. Arias.
The man who appeared before her bore little resemblance to the passionate youth she remembered. He was heavier, married, and the father of three children. But his purpose was unmistakable. He told her he was divorcing and wanted to marry again—and he wanted her.
Confronted with the sudden return of her greatest love, now transformed into a complicated and burdened man, Margot was disoriented and frightened. The memory of the boy she had loved clashed painfully with the reality of the man standing before her. She resisted. Only after a tense, emotionally exhausting courtship did she finally surrender and say yes.
They married, but their life together would be anything but peaceful.
In 1965, catastrophe struck. Roberto de Arias survived an assassination attempt that left him permanently paralyzed. He became tetraplegic for the rest of his life. In a single moment, Margot’s marriage turned into a lifelong commitment to care, endurance, and sacrifice.
The cost of Roberto’s constant, highly specialized medical care was staggering. Margot immediately abandoned any thoughts of retirement. She became the sole financial provider, shouldering the responsibility alone. To meet the expenses, she continued accepting exhausting, high-paying international guest appearances, pushing her body far beyond what was considered reasonable—even possible—for a prima ballerina.
She danced not because she wanted to, but because she had to.
Margot extended her career well beyond the customary retirement age, performing until 1979, her sixtieth year, specifically to cover the costs of her husband’s care. While her career would have naturally declined with age, this prolonged effort was a profound act of loyalty—one that revealed the depth of her devotion more clearly than words ever could.
Yet fate, in its strange cruelty and generosity, granted her a luminous second act just before tragedy struck.
In 1961, Margot met the man who, in her own words, “gave me a second career—like an Indian summer.” Until then, she had only heard rumors of Rudolf Nureyev. He was 23 years old, volatile, magnetic, and newly defected from the Soviet Union, seeking asylum in the West.
A mutual acquaintance suggested that Nureyev be invited as guest of honor to the Royal Academy of Dance gala—on one condition demanded by the young Russian: he would only appear if he could dance with Margot Fonteyn.
Their first performance together, Giselle, took place on February 21, 1962. The audience was electrified. At the final curtain call, time seemed to suspend. In a spontaneous, dramatic gesture, Nureyev knelt before Fonteyn and kissed her hand. The crowd erupted.
That moment sealed an artistic alliance that would endure for a lifetime. Despite a twenty-year age gap and radically different backgrounds, Fonteyn and Nureyev became inseparable partners on stage and lifelong friends off it. Their chemistry redefined classical ballet and captivated audiences around the world.
But the cost of continuing to dance in her fifties and sixties was brutal.
By the 1970s, Margot suffered from severe arthritis in her foot—a devastating condition for a dancer whose art depended on absolute precision and control. To perform demanding roles such as Swan Lake or Giselle, she often required injections simply to manage the pain enough to stand and move.
Yet when the curtain rose, none of that pain was visible. She retained the ethereal purity, elegance, and serenity that had defined her entire career. Her technique and artistry masked the physical agony beneath, creating the illusion of weightlessness even as her body protested every step.
Margot Fonteyn’s final performance with the Royal Ballet came in 1979, a farewell piece choreographed by Sir Frederick Ashton for her 60th birthday. It marked the end of a career that had become inseparable from personal sacrifice, emotional endurance, and unwavering discipline.
Her extraordinary life—defined by breathtaking art and profound devotion—offers a timeless reflection on the resilience and quiet strength women so often carry.
Margot’s strength was not merely physical, though dancing through crippling pain demanded extraordinary endurance. It was emotional, intellectual, and moral. For decades, she balanced artistic excellence at the highest level with overwhelming personal responsibility, financial pressure, and emotional strain.
Her choice to continue dancing long past the age of retirement embodies a broader truth: women frequently transform personal devotion into extraordinary acts of endurance. Whether in the spotlight or in private life, countless women give more than they should, often at great personal cost, to support the people they love—sometimes forgetting themselves along the way.
Margot Fonteyn danced until there was nothing left to give.
And in that quiet, relentless dedication, she became immortal.
