A real-life ballet scandal: the affair that shocked the dance world.
At the age of forty Dame Margot Fonteyn is considered to be past her best as a prima ballerina and Ninette de Valois is reducing her roles at the Royal Ballet. Then the exciting young Russian dancer Rudolf Nureyev, a recent defector to the West, comes into her life and her bed and revitalizes her career. Frederick Aashton creates a new ballet for them and they become the golden couple of the ballet world. However, Margot is married to Roberto 'Tito' Arias, a Panamanian politician of dubious repute who is not sympathetic to her calling and is probably faithless. When he is shot and paralyzed for life Margot must carry on dancing well into her sixties in order to pay for his costly treatment though she still collaborates with Rudolf in the occasional ballet.
Acting
Anne-Marie Duff captures Margot's fragility and steel.
Costume
Tutus and tweed that scream 1960s British establishment.
Director
Otto Bathurst
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Anne-Marie Duff trained with former Royal Ballet dancers for months; her blisters were apparently very method.
Fonteyn and Nureyev's real partnership remains the most famous in ballet history; she was 19 years his senior and they never publicly confirmed the affair.
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