I am a sixty seven year old man that saw the first night of mc Millams romeo and juliet with Fonteyn and Nureyev on my dying day I am sure i will remember it as the most amazing thing that I ever have seen.

the BEST in history

This is the most committed performance of Romeo and Juliet. The emotions are palbable, raw, and strangely innocent. I almost feel like a voyeur, seeing something only meant to be shared in private. Moments like these affirm the real value and need for artistic expression in our society. The strive for perfection is never a waste.

Wonderful. Love, passion, suffering without words, Just movements, gestures which express everything. Heavenly.

cant stop crying..

just the best! Probably the best we have ever seen.

Such a classic... i don't know how anybody could dislike this video (??)

I remember walking to the movie theater with my girlfriend after school to see this. We cried our eyes out then, and it still gets to me. Nureyev is compelling in motion and Fonteyn even when she's standing still. Little did I know I'd get to play that marvelous score with the Cleveland Ballet.

the music in this is really fantastic. It really helps to add more feeling to the scene

Beautiful and mesmerizing. The emotion is superbly conveyed.

This is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. They've captured the ethereal essence of love. I thank the universe for Nureyev, Fonteyn and film. Perfection in (e)motion.

ahh just fonteyn raising her arm at the beginning makes my heart melt

Fonteyn is over and above exquisite in this performance!

They were the best we ever saw... and the best we ever saw from them were the pieces that were made... especially for them. As someone who he himself has danced this great sport, those like Rudi & Margot are to be kept close at heart. Admired, loved... even emulated. This dance was put on this earth specifically for them. Others have done it, but there's just something about the ones it was first made for... FOR RUDI AND MARGOT --Love & Dance, Dane Youssef

Fonteyn was made a legend by a global public who adored her. So, to her critics, she must got 'something right'!! When I watch this I see a young girl in love for the first time: confused, overwhelmed and ecstatic with emotion. I forget she's in her forties because of her pure artistry. Fonteyn and Nureyev are simply breathtaking. I don't care about feet or technique - it's perfect & makes me cry. Lynn S & Christopher G were robbed, but I feel blessed that 'this' was the pairing filmed.

Definitely a classic- brings back memories.

There are only two reasons why someone could dislike this. Number one: just to cause an annoyance. Number two: they don't understand. The technique and choreography in this piece is way beyond its time.

I saw them dance this in Los Angeles and have never forgotten it!

I saw Swan Lake then R & J on 2 consecutive nights. First I wondered if they'd added choreography to give him more, then finally noticing her wondered if they'd made it easier because steps seemed missing. and then I realized - no, she just made it look that easy. At age 52, completely Juliet at 16, pure naked soul, beyond technique. The tears began to roll - and continued all that night & through the next. I will never forget & I was never the same. She was unbelievable.

my ballet master was in the royal ballet and he can never stop talking about how purely mesmerizing margot fonteyn was. i now see that my teacher is completely correct! and nureyev is amazing too!

Breathtaking

Absolutely Fabulous! Brings back memories when I danced...... I saw this Ballet production in 1966 ! Magical when they danced together. My Idols...... both of them.......

There is no Juliet like Fontey so beautiful can break hearts....in this 100 years.

Wow! He soars! and together they dance with such abandonment! Beautiful!!! They really are a wonderful match, same caliber.

@lusa525 totally agree! when fonteyn dances you cannot take your eyes off her. the passion behind this piece is beautiful it not about how high one can lift their legs or how strong or flexiable they are, it is the dancer inside that matters

Pure joy

One of ballets greatest moments still!

A masterpiece, danced by two brilliant artists.

Fantastica !

The classic dance is very beautiful, I love it !

В этом спектакле, балете и Фонтейн и Нуриев, великолепны не только, как танцоры, но здесь ещё и высший пилотаж актёрского мастерства, столько гармонии и чувств, что понимаешь их недосигаемую высоту не только в балете, но и в театральном исскустве. А МАРГО здесь исполняет уже за сорок лет, а движения молоды. СПАСИБО ЗА УДОВОЛЬСТВИЕ ЛИЦЕЗРЕТЬ ДВУХ ВЕЛИКИХ ИСПОЛНИТЕЛЕЙ❗

Your words make me weep with pure joy. To have minds reach through space and time to share a miracle created long ago, yet they will be forever suspended in such sweet perfection. 😊

Это невозможно описать. это надо пережить в жизни.Ничего подобного в балете я не видела и не увижу больше никогда.На сцене любовь и радость жизни. На разрыв сердца! Их бог этим одарил. Аллилуйя любви! Аллилуйя!

Wonderful ty

they are the best ballet couple ever. I love them together, esp in their later more modern pieces.

chemistry is an amazing thing :-)

what a pair there will never be a replacement

Super really superb Fonteyn and nureyev......jzpatelut...

soooooo Beautiful! Thank you for the video.

it makes me sad whenever listening to this wonderful music

i saw another vid of this version with cojocaru and aosta and thought it was an entirely different version than this one. but each pairing and genration is so beautiful in it's own way... indescribable. i have this on dvd and love watching dame fonteyn and nureyev. just beautiful.....

I attended this ballet at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden in 1996. It was my first ballet. Unforgettable performance by two people who were born to dance together.

Fonteyn was jailed with her husband a wealthy Panamanian for working with Castro to overthrow the government of Panama. Tons of info on the Internet. First performance in Romeo & Juliette by these 2 was 1966 at the Royal Ballet. I bought the VHS tape in 1975 and later the DVD. No one else compares to Fonteyn and Nuryev.in this beautiful work choreographed by McMillan. Simply sublime. God rest their souls.

FAntastic

This is perfectly beautiful and makes a point. Technical brilliance has changed over the years and even this choreography was probably intended for a ballerina with greater flexibility especially in terms of extensions. But, Fonteyn is a true prima, not because of the perfect technique which was her legend, but because her soul is in every movement. Together she and Nureyev knock this one out of the park. He was way ahead of his time also.💖

I read the bigraphy of Nureyev and Fonteyn many years ago in a book of art from my mother, the book describes their duo like no other in the history of classical dance, then I dont saw what was talking about, but now I see this demostration of thrue art, this is really amazing. Both are the best of dance.

The deep passionate love they shared, in their own lives .Comes through so vibrantly, no one can be imune to the intensity of their unsurpassable performance . Quite simply exquisite . I adore them for their being; We have the honeur to witness magic

How I wish they could have danced this together when she was younger!

Danced beautifully and with a moving honesty. To whatch, enjoy and learn.

PERFECCIÓN PURA. BELLEZA PURA.

If I were to time travel, I'll definitely attend this performance back in 1966.

So beautiful thank you.

Какие чудесные у Марго Фонтейн руки !!! Какую "полетность" и трогательность они придают ее образам !

I did not get to see them perform this famous work together but I did see them dance together and I stood outside the door to the theater and saw them in person for a moment after a series of performances in Atlanta. They were tiny. I weighed about 120 pounds and was 5’3” and I was a giant near them. She was about 50 when I saw her dance.

Linda obraprima viva em movimento com suavidade e romantismo!

Непревзойденный,Бог танца Рудольф Нуреев!Сегодня день рождения.

More than dancing going on here...

MARAVILLOSA PAREJA

I remember sleeping in my friend's mini in Floral Street for 2 nights in the freezing cold to queue for tickets to see Margot and Rudi In Romeo and Juliet.I paid £2.10.00 Shillings for my ticket in the Stalls Circle.I booked to see them In Giselle and Swan Lake as well.

It's shocking how modern they were for their time. They would be beautiful even today.

Even better than the original movie with. Hussey and Whiting.(and I adored that movie)..... LOVE Rudy and Margot

We star Romeo and Juliet at the San Francisco Ballet this month.

This can cure any desease.

De otro planeta

touches my soul every time i see it...again and again there are many ballerinas with better technique but how she create a role ..this is true artistry and make her beeing a legend ..

hermoso simplemente..

1966 I saw this in a cinema in Manchester when I was at University!

I must be missing something here. What is wrong with Fonteyn's technique? Everything she does is so clean and precise no over the top extra personal additions to the choreography. Fonteyn is classical ballet and there are millions who agree.She is the full package, dance r and actress. Feel like I am on a mission here!!

Исключительно впечатляет!!

At 8.00 to 8.10. Breathtaking and soul touching emotion. Wow. This grumpy guy is thinking of lost loves right now.

Nureyev dances in another dimension, purely amazing. Fonteyn has the presence of a prima ballerina. Mc Millan stays always tuned to the rendition of the emotionnal states .

Maravilhosos! Não me canso de ver os dis dançando juntos.

It's long time ago - since for some years Nurejew had been leeding the Viennese Opera Ballet Greetings from Vienna

Forget dancing on ice ... this is the real deal!

Nureyev is to dance what Heifetz is to the violin: he just makes everyone else look bad

gorgeous video and wonderful music... i shivered for the whole video throught... brilliant... thanks for posting! i'm going to the RAH to see it tonight! Looking forward to it! =D

la perfection

👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰

The most romantic kissing

@xanyxxx look at fonteyn's legs and arms, you will notice muscle if you look carefully. besides, pointe is nothing like foot binding. pointe is practised slowly with the ballerina knowing the consequences and foot binding is forced on suddenly. also, with care, feet can be taken care of very well. if you've never done pointe before don't judge!!!

Yes really faskinating and superb indeed...jzpatelut...

When a child asks "What is Ballet?", simply show them this clip, and they will know..

performance i did not miss

At 8.02, she turns, looks, and the pursuer is transfixed. Astonishing.

Can you say amazing? the most fabulous couple dancing the most famous of scenes....breathtaking really! And to think she was his elder of 20 years!

what brought me here was the Movie "10" and what Bo Derek said :

That kind of love

After watching this I can't believe I even momentarily thought that Natalie Portman did all the dancing in 'Black Swan'

Shame on the person who deleted my comment of yesterday. I just compared this version with Nureyev's own choreography of this scene for the Paris Ballet. The Parisian scene was marvelous and full of exuberance and joy. However, this scene is far more intense because it includes the fear and awe of first love. All lovers experience a partial death of childhood or self sufficiency. But Romeo and Juliet's capacity to truly love their enemy will result in their deaths, just as it did for Jesus Christ who they mirror on a romantic level. Juliet must come down from her spiritual balcony into the physical and violent world of Verona to meet Romeo. 19th Century Ballet has an otherworldly idealism or perfection at its heart, a straining literally to fly, to rise above the earth. Here, Prokofiev's music brings that idealism down into the explosive world of the 20th Century, Divine Love, as in Dante and as in Christ's incarnation, descends into the finite, mortal world. Fonteyn captures so well Juliet's change from childish playfulness to adult passion. Shakespeare wrote Romeo and Juliet just one year after the great plague which closed the theaters in London and killed 11,000 people, including his only son Hamnet who was only 11. So Shakespeare writes this great play as a grieving parent to an audience who are overwhelmed with grief on a scale few of us can imagine. In the play, the friar carrying Friar Laurence's message to Romeo to explain the mock death of Juliet is quarantined when he stops to help someone with plague. Shakespeare creates a story of a love which tries to drown the violence and hatred of the world which murders these innocent children, Shakespeare wants to lift these lovers into the immortal world of tragedy and poetry. Perhaps Shakespeare even suspected that the plague had been deliberately sent as germ warfare by the Spanish who had lost the Battle of the Spanish Armada only a few years earlier. These lovers must love so completely, so truly that their love can conquer hate. We see in Fonteyn and Nureyev such absolute love, he an exiled Russian, she an older woman married to a man crippled for much of his life after an accident. Dance speaks so eloquently things which cannot be spoken in words. In dance the body becomes the music and enters a world beyond verbal language. These two dancers give us a love which rises above humanity's need to hurt, to find some excuse to injure others, to live from one violent strut of superiority to another. These lovers live in the humility which is the basis of all love, Romantic and Spiritual. We need each other to be complete, we are not fully human or divine until we put down our defenses and find our home in others. Surely Romeo and Juliet, Fonteyn and Nureyev found that home in each other. And perhaps Shakespeare, longing for his lost son, found Hamnet in writing plays to immortalize his son, Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, and his sonnets where Shakespeare claims he will make the Beloved live in lines of poetry. Shakespeare, the poet, will conquer Hamnet's death. And indeed he does each time we watch Shakespeare's plays or the ballet which his lovers inspired: But thy eternal summer shall not fade, Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st, Nor shall death brag thou wander'st in his shade, When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st, So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee. Sonnet 18 But I can give thee more: For I will raise her statue in pure gold; That while Verona by that name is known, There shall no figure at such rate be set As that of true and faithful Juliet. Romeo and Juliet, Act V Come, night; come, Romeo; come, thou day in night; For thou wilt lie upon the wings of night Whiter than new snow upon a raven's back. Come, gentle night; come, loving, black-browed night; Give me my Romeo; and, when he shall die, Take him and cut him out in little stars, And he will make the face of heaven so fine That all the world will be in love with night And pay no worship to the garish sun. Romeo and Juliet Act III

漫画でみて気になって見にきたけど、良すぎて。

Should've liked this ages ago...

Yes i agree with you thanks...jzpatelut..

Благодарю !

Same with Makarova. That ballerina couldn’t turn to save her life, Balanchine was beyond her and much of her dancing had a messy or fidgety quality about it, like she was always having to make adjustments for little slip-ups. Yet her feet en pointe shone like baguette diamonds, her persona burned up the stage like a supernova and people who saw her, never ever forgot her. On the other hand a ballerina of Svetlana Zakharova’s technical brilliance and physical facility leaves me decidedly unmoved.

Аллилуйя любви! Аллилуйя!

anyone who is a fan of Nureyev or Fonteyn, is a dancer, has been a dancer, or has ever been even remotely interested in dance should read the book Dancer by Colum McCann. I was a pre-professional dancer for five years, a time which I remember fondly while at the same time being glad that I quit when I did, and nothing else has captured the world of dance, and the human condition in general, as exquisitely as that book did. please, please read it

when this is filmed? can someone tell me pl? Thanks . tears in my eyes!!

@Caspia29 I get your point, never really thought about it until now.

Lo vely 3xs view thanks dancerr bev

sorry but classical dance is not only to be having a good technique...in our days all the famous dancer show us nothing else than technique so that we think this is ballet. its the base true but to be an artist had nothing to do with high legs and technique..'(and like high legs and good technique very well but she touches heart and soul after 50 jears in old films.. how phantastic they must be live on stage ....