One of the most memorable qualities she displayed in her roles (some danced, against all odds, into her sixties) was her absolute purity. Here fans may learn things about Britain's greatest ballerina and muse of Britain's greatest choreographer, Frederick Ashton, that they'd rather not know. Daneman has also written four novels, so, although her narrative is anchored in massive research, it is shaped as drama. That she understands the ballet world and the physical demands of dance so well is one of the book's greatest assets. Daneman came to her task as a former dancer (with the Australian Ballet) and a fan the pensive early photograph that graces the book's cover is one that hung for years over the author's bed. Hers is the most thorough of all the biographies to date, including Fonteyn's Autobiography. This insight is not the only one I gained from Daneman's book. Half a century later, I learn from Meredith Daneman's new biography, Margot Fonteyn: A Life, that the role's creator, Tamara Karsavina, had pressed the English dancer to this characterization: "You are a wild bird, Margot," Karsavina told her, "you've never felt a human hand on your body before, you've never been caught and it's terrible." That's what Fonteyn showed us that night. Fonteyn, wearing a veritable chieftain's war bonnet of red feathers, was a leaping, quivering flame - passionate yet not fully human. What I remember most vividly from that evening's performance was Margot Fonteyn in Mikhail Fokine's "Firebird." We were used to Maria Tallchief's cool, steely power in George Balanchine's version of the work. When Britain's Sadler's Wells Ballet came to the old Metropolitan Opera House in 1955, my roommates and I (dancers all three) took turns all day standing in a line that snaked around the block. By Reviewed Deborah Jowitt October 24, 2004
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