Quote #8

How to put something so visual, so potent with theatrical moment that even film cannot capture it, into plain words? How to explain why it is that when, to a particular strain of music, an ordinary mortal steps forward on one leg, raises the other behind her and lifts her arms above her head, the angels hold their breath? ~ Meredith Daneman

More from Margot Fonteyn

  1. What a beautiful step! I shall never be able to do it.
  2. The one important thing I have learned over the years is the difference between taking one's work seriously and taking one's self seriously…
  3. Minor things can become moments of great revelation when encountered for the first time.
  4. Life offstage has sometimes been a wilderness of unpredictables in an unchoreographed world.
  5. If I have learnt anything, it is that life forms no logical patterns. It is haphazard and full of beauties which I try to catch as they fly…
  6. Great artists are people who find the way to be themselves in their art. Any sort of pretension induces mediocrity in art and life alike.
  7. Genius is another word for magic, and the whole point of magic is that it is inexplicable.

All Margot Fonteyn quotes