Rudolf Nureyev

Rudolf Nureyev (Tatar form Rudolf Xämät ulı Nuriev, Russian Рудольф Хаметович Нуриев) (17 March 1938 – 6 January 1993), is regarded as one of the greatest male ballet dancers of the 20th century, alongside Maris Liepa, Vaslav Nijinsky, Alexander Godunov and Mikhail Baryshnikov.

Biography

Early life and career at the Kirov

Nureyev was born on the Trans-Siberian train near Irkutsk, Siberia, Soviet Union, while his mother Farida was travelling to Vladivostok, where his father Hamat, a Red Army political commissar was stationed ^[1]. He was raised as the only son in a Tatar family in a village near Ufa in Soviet republic of Bashkiria. When his mother smuggled him and his sisters into a performance of the ballet "Song of the Cranes", he fell in love with dance. ^[2] As a child he was encouraged to dance in Bashkir folk performances and his precocity was soon noticed by teachers who encouraged him to train in Leningrad. On a tour stop in Moscow with a local ballet company, Nureyev auditioned for the Bolshoi ballet company and was accepted. However, he felt that the Kirov Ballet school was the best, so he left the local touring company and bought a ticket to Leningrad.^[3]

Due to the disruption of Soviet cultural life caused by World War II, Nureyev was unable to enroll in a major ballet school until 1955, aged 17, when he was accepted by the Vaganova Choreographic Institute, attached to the Kirov.

Despite his late start, he was soon recognized as an incredibly gifted dancer. Nureyev pushed himself hard, rehearsing for hours in order to make up for the years of training he missed. Under the tutelage of a great teacher, Alexander Pushkin, he blossomed. Pushkin not only took an interest in him professionally, but also allowed the younger dancer to live with him and his wife, with the latter of whom, at 21,he had an affair. Upon graduation, the Kirov and the Bolshoi both wanted to sign him. He continued with the Kirov and went on to become a soloist - extremely unusual for someone of his age and experience.

In his three years with the Kirov, he danced fifteen roles, usually opposite his partner, Ninel Kurgapkina, with whom he was very well paired, although she was almost a decade older than him ^[4]. He became one of the Soviet Union's best-known dancers, in a country which revered the ballet and made national heroes of its stars. Soon he enjoyed the rare privilege of travel outside the Soviet Union, when he danced in Vienna at the International Youth Festival. Not long after, for disciplinary reasons, he was told he would not be allowed to go abroad again. He was confined to tours of the Soviet republics.

Defection to the West

In 1961 Nureyev's situation changed. The Kirov's leading male dancer, Konstantin Sergeyev, was injured, and at the last minute Nureyev was chosen to replace him on the Kirov's European tour. In Paris, his performances electrified audiences and critics, but he broke the rules about mingling with foreigners, which alarmed the Kirov's management. The KGB wanted to send him back to the Soviet Union immediately. As a subterfuge, they told him that he would not travel with the company to London to continue the tour because he was needed to dance at a special performance in the Kremlin. He believed that if he returned to the U.S.S.R., he would likely be imprisoned, due to the fact that KGB agents had been investigating him for being gay. It has been the more popular and accepted belief that he "leaped to freedom" in order to be a "free artist", though many of Nureyev's private accounts, as well the accounts of many of his close friends, tell that he stayed in the west due to the dire consequences of being gay in the Soviet Union.

On June 17 1961 at the Le Bourget Airport in Paris Rudolf Nureyev defected. Within a week, he was signed up by the Grand Ballet du Marquis de Cuevas and was performing The Sleeping Beauty with Nina Vyroubova. His dramatic defection, outstanding technique, exotic looks, and astonishing charisma on stage made him an international star.

Nureyev's defection also gave him the personal freedom he had been denied in the Soviet Union. On a tour of Denmark he met Erik Bruhn, a dancer ten years his senior, who became his lover, his closest friend and his protector for many years. Bruhn was director of the Royal Swedish Ballet from 1967 to 1972 and Artistic Director of the National Ballet of Canada from 1983 until his death in 1986.

Although he petitioned the Soviet government for many years to be allowed to visit his mother to whom he remained very close, he was not allowed to do so until 1989, when his mother was dying and Mikhail Gorbachev consented to the visit. During this visit, and in spite of his diminished physical ability, he was invited to dance with the Kirov Ballet at the Maryinsky theatre in Leningrad. The visit gave him the opportunity to see many of the teachers and colleagues he had not seen since he defected, including his first ballet teacher in Ufa.

Fonteyn and Nureyev

Nureyev's first appearance in Britain was at a ballet matinée organised by Margot Fonteyn in aid of The Royal Academy of Dancing, at which he danced "Poeme Tragique", a heavily symbolic solo choreographed by Frederick Ashton, and brought the house to its feet in the Black Swan pas de deux from Swan Lake. He formed a partnership with Fonteyn which became perhaps the most famous in modern theatre history. Their first performance together was at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, in Giselle on February 21 1962.

Together Nureyev and Fonteyn forever transformed such cornerstone ballets as Swan Lake and Giselle. Fonteyn and Nureyev premiered Sir Frederick Ashton's ballet Marguerite and Armand, a ballet danced to Liszt's B minor piano sonata, which became their signature piece. They always completely sold out the house, and this led to some injustice, notably when Kenneth Macmillan was forced to allow them to premiere his Romeo and Juliet, which was mounted for two other dancers. Films exist of their partnership in Les Sylphides, Swan Lake, Romeo and Juliet, and other roles. Nureyev did much for the Royal Ballet, and their management made a colossal blunder in not appointing him as the director of the company after Ashton's retirement, thus losing him to Paris.

Fonteyn and Nureyev's relationship was not just onstage. Offstage, they became lifelong close friends, even after her retirement to Panama. They were known to giggle their way through practices. They often fought too — Nureyev was not a patient person, and was known to curse at Fonteyn when practices did not go well. Nevertheless, anyone who ever knew them said Fonteyn was the dearest person to Nureyev's heart, and Fonteyn in turn was fanatically loyal to Nureyev. When she was suffering from cancer, Nureyev paid many of her medical bills and visited her constantly despite his busy schedule.

Towards the end of Nureyev's life, when his body was wracked by AIDS, Fonteyn urged him to start a career conducting, and he did, to some success. According to Meredith Daneman's biography of Fonteyn, when Nureyev admitted that his body was too wracked with disease and injury to dance, and he was considering conducting, Fonteyn exclaimed, "Darling, that's perfect!!!" Nureyev once said of Fonteyn that they danced with "one body, one soul".

Later career

Nureyev was immediately in demand by film-makers, and in 1962 he made his screen debut in a film version of Les Sylphides. In 1977 he played Rudolph Valentino in Ken Russell's Valentino, but he decided against an acting career in order to branch into modern dance with the Dutch National Ballet in 1968. In 1972 Robert Helpmann invited him to tour Australia with his own production of Don Quixote ^[5]), his directorial debut.

During the 1970s, Nureyev appeared in several films and toured the United States in a revival of the Broadway musical The King and I. His guest appearance on the television series The Muppet Show is credited with boosting the series to its worldwide success. ^{[citation needed]} In 1982 he became a naturalized Austrian. In 1983 he was appointed director of the Paris Opera Ballet, where as well as directing he continued to dance and to promote younger dancers. Among the dancers he groomed were Sylvie Guillem, Isabel Guerin, Manuel Legris, Elisabeth Maurin, Elisabeth Platel, Charles Jude, and Monique Loudieres. Despite advancing illness towards the end of his tenure, he worked tirelessly, staging new versions of old standbys and commissioning some of the most ground-breaking choreographic works of his time. His own Romeo and Juliet, set in Hollywood, was a popular success.

In 1983 he was offered and accepted the position of ballet director of the Paris Opera, where he remained as a dancer and chief of choreography until 1989.

Personality

Because of Nureyev's gifts he was usually forgiven for many things, but stardom did little to improve his temperament. He was notoriously impulsive and did not have much patience with rules, limitations and hierarchical order. His impatience mainly showed itself when the failings of others interfered with his work. Most ballerinas with whom he danced, including Antoinette Sibley and Annette Page paid tribute to him as a considerate partner. Nureyev was homosexual at a time when it was illegal and may have ended his career had it become known. It is thought that he would occasionally solicit male prostitutes. He was a very reclusive person.

He socialised with Freddie Mercury, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Mick Jagger, Andy Warhol and Talitha Pol, but developed an intolerance for celebrities. He kept up old friendships in and out of the ballet world for decades, and was considered to be a loyal and generous friend. He was known as extremely generous to many ballerinas, who credit him with helping them during difficult times. In particular, the Canadian ballerina Lynn Seymour - distressed when she was denied the opportunity to premiere Macmillan's Romeo and Juliet - says that Nureyev often found projects for her even when she was suffering from weight issues and depression and thus had trouble finding roles. He is also said to have helped an elderly and increasingly impoverished Tamara Karsavina.

By the end of the 1970s, when he was in his 40s, he faced the inevitable decline of his amazing physical prowess. However, he continued to tackle big classical roles in the late 1980s, and his rather diminished capabilities disappointed his admirers who had fond memories of his outstanding prowess and skill. Towards the end of his life, he was wrecked by the ravages of AIDS, but still worked tirelessly on productions for the Paris Opera Ballet. His last work was a lavish production of La Bayadere which closely follows the Kirov Ballet version he danced as a young man.

Influence and AIDS

Nureyev's influence on the world of ballet changed the perception of male dancers; in his own productions of the classics the male roles received much more choreography. Another important influence was his crossing the borders between classical ballet and modern dance by performing both. Today it is normal for dancers to receive training in both styles, but Nureyev was originator, and the practice was much criticized in his day.

When AIDS appeared in France in about 1982, Nureyev took little notice. For several years he simply denied that anything was wrong with his health: when, about 1990, he became undeniably ill, he is said to have attributed these to other ailments. He tried several experimental treatments but they did not stop his inevitable decline. Towards the end of his life, as dancing became more and more agonizing, he resigned himself to small non-dancing roles. At the urging of Fonteyn, he had a short but successful conducting career, which was cut short due to his declining health.

Eventually, he had to face the reality that he was dying and he won the admiration of many of his detractors by his courage during this period. The loss of his looks pained him, but he continued to struggle through public appearances. At his last appearance, a 1992 production of La Bayadère at the Palais Garnier, Nureyev received an emotional standing ovation. The French Culture Minister, Jack Lang, presented him with France's highest cultural award, the Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et Lettres. He died in Paris a few months later, aged 54.

His grave, at a Russian cemetery in Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois near Paris, features a mosaic headstone of an oriental Turkic-style carpet. Nuruyev was an avid collector of beautiful carpets and antique textiles.^[6]

Footnotes

1. ^ http://www.nureyev.org/biographie_russie.php
2. ^ http://www.nureyev.org/biographie_russie.php
3. ^ http://www.nureyev.org/biographie_kirov.php
4. ^ Nureyev.org
5. ^ Set and Costume Designs for Don Quixote by Barry Kay for both the stage production at the Adelaide Festival (1970) and Nureyev's movie version, gala world premiere at the Sydney Opera House, 1973.
6. ^ http://www.nureyev.org/tombeau.php

Further reading

• Nureyev, R.; Bland, A. (1962). Nureyev: An Autobiography with Pictures. London: Hodder and Stoughton. OCLC: 65776396. 
• Percival, J. (1976). Nureyev: Aspects of the Dancer. London: Faber. OCLC: 2689702. ISBN 0571106277. 
• Bland, A. (1977). The Nureyev Valentino: Portrait of a Film. London: Studio Vista. OCLC: 3933869. ISBN 0289707951. 
• Nureyev, R.; Bland A. (1993). Nureyev: His Spectacular Early Years. London: Hodder & Stoughton. OCLC: 28496501. ISBN 034060042X. 
• Watson, P. (1994). Nureyev: a biography. London: Hodder & Stoughton. OCLC: 32162130. ISBN 0340596155. 
• Solway, D. (1998). Nureyev, his life. New York: William Morrow. OCLC: 38485934. ISBN 0688128734. 
• Kavanagh, J. (2007). Rudolph Nureyev: The Life. London; New York: Fig Tree. OCLC: 77013261. ISBN 1905490151. 

External links

• Rudolf Nureyev Foundation
• BBC Interviews with Nureyev
• Birthday tribute
• Nureyev's grave
• Stage and Costume Designs by Barry Kay for Nureyev ballets at the Barry Kay Archive
• Gay Great - Rudolf Nureyev
• Wyeth Paints Nureyev Exhibition at the Kennedy Center
• New York Sun review of PBS's "Nureyev: The Russian Years"

• http://fonteynacademy.org

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