"One Body, One Soul"~ an archival dance/poetry project

A new research project at Arts Centre Melbourne archives, exploring the collection for artefacts that pertain to Rudolf Nureyev and Margot Fonteyn's tours with The Australian Ballet.

Last week I started a new dance/writing project, consulting the archives of Melbourne Arts Centre for photographs, programmes, articles and costumes which tell the story of a great on stage love affair, between Rudolf Nureyev and Margot Fonteyn.

In the years succeeding their first duet in 1961, Margot (then, 42) and Rudolf (then 23), became the fascination of international audiences, as their onstage chemistry was “the perfect partnership”. Nureyev famously said: “at the end of Swan Lake, when she left the stage in her great white tutu, I would have followed her to the end of the world,” and that the pair danced as “one body, one soul’.

Their connection cannot be explained simply through conventional romantic narratives (the pair never lived together nor formally dated) yet their deeply intimate dance connection was more than just a duet.

Fonteyn surmised perfectly that she’d “found the perfect partner” in Nureyev. Their emotional and bodily enmeshment in the rehearsal room was devotional and moving. As dance critic Alexander Bland said, “they seemed aware of each other even when their backs were turned. When their eye met, a message was passed.”

The evidence for their deep balletic/poetic love is abundant in their actions, from captured footage in rehearsal, where Nureyev said other dancers would often be “in tears watching them dance”, and the fact that they supported each other until death. As Fonteyn declined rapidly in health upon retiring, Nureyev paid her hospital bills until the very end, saying she was “family…there is only her.”