Margot Fonteyn

Margot Fonteyn was the Royal Ballet's defining ballerina for four decades -- the artist around whom Frederick Ashton built his greatest works and who gave the company its international identity in the postwar years. Her partnership with Rudolf Nureyev from 1962, begun when she was 42 and he was 24, produced performances of Giselle, Swan Lake, and Romeo and Juliet that are still considered the interpretive standard by which all others are measured. Queen Elizabeth II appointed her Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1956, and she was later named prima ballerina assoluta -- a designation so rare it has been awarded only a handful of times in history.