Monica Mason on learning to dance the Firebird

When I came to learn it a year or so ago, Michael Somes taught us. And then I said to Norman [Morrice], "I know the role now. I know how to dance the steps and I know what all the steps are. but I just have got to have a link with the past. You've got to get Margo or somebody to come and show us how it felt. You've got to show us what the ballet's about." This is not to knock Michael in any sense at all, but this I felt was the one role where you had to talk to somebody who'd danced it.

Margot had actually been coached by Karsavina, and I knew that Margot held the key for the Firebird because she had got it directly from Karsavina herself. And Margot of course, as always, was so busy and couldn't be reached and wasn't available and then couldn't do it and then she'd be in the building and couldn't stay and all this. But I just couldn't accept the fact that she was not available for half an hour at some point in her life. And eventually once day I appealed to Norman: I said, "You know, I have a feeling that if I can't get some time with Margot, I don't really want to do it, because I can't do it without that." I was passionate about it. And so he had another talk to her. and one day, I suppose literally she gave us about forty-five minutes or an hour. It was wonderful. From the moment she started, I knew that I'd been right -- I had really, really needed her.

She just used some of the words that Karsavina had used for her; what had been conveyed to her had really stayed. And they have stayed, they will stay, with me. On the very first entrance in Firebird, she said, "This is your territory, your domain, and you don't fly over it, you soar. You soar over your territory. Even a sparrow notices if another sparrow comes to perch on his tree, his branch. So imagine what it must be like for the Firebird to have a man invade her territory and actually capture her." And immediately one had a whole different picture. And then she talked about the viciousness of the bird. Apparently, according to Russian folklore, Firebirds actually ate men. She absolutely was a man-eater. So the Prince doesn't really know what he has caught, but the Firebird knows.

And she said that Karsavina had said that from the moment the Prince catches her, she hates him. She hates him for daring even to touch her. Nobody dares to touch her. And another thing Margo said was that when you plead with him to let you go, you still retain this hatred for him, that there's no softening in your feelings. You hate him, and you even hate the fact that you have to ask him to release you. You have to plead, but you plead without losing any of your dignity or your feeling of self-preservation. So all of that stirred one's imagination, which was really what I knew I needed for the role. Those were the things I latched onto and tried to understand. They all make it very fantastical, which the music is.

Striking a Balance: Dancers talk about Dancing by Barbara Newman.1982. Pages 300-1.