A Surgical Curtain Call

Abstract

In early 1952, Margot Fonteyn was recovering from a leg injury that had threatened her career. Already famous at 33, she felt her future uncertain as she fought her way back through physiotherapy and exercise. Fonteyn, after her recent close contact with surgeons, was fascinated by the many aspects of their work and the manner in which they trained for their careers. She understood intuitively the linkage between their daily grind, which she saw as equivalent to her repetitious exercises at the barre, and their preparations for major performances with death as the audience, which tested their stamina, inner resources, surgical choreography, and confidence born of training. She was convinced that surgery could not be dissociated from theater and a sense of grace. I was a resident when I met Margot Fonteyn on a foggy Sunday afternoon in what was still a depressed postwar London. How we both arrived at