Best foot FORWARD
They say it’s only rarely that life imitates art, but so it was on 20 February 1946. As Margot Fonteyn’s Sleeping Beauty awoke from slumber on the stage of the Royal Opera House, so too did the building itself, reborn after its wartime stint as a big-band dance hall. Night after night for the next 19 weeks its grand auditorium was packed once more, as crowds thronged to see the best that British ballet could offer.
It’s hard to believe that just two decades earlier, Britain had no professional ballet company. In fact, it had no tradition of classical ballet at all; for
