Rudolf Nureyev

Soviet-born Austrian dancer and choreographer

• Born: March 17, 1938
• Birthplace: Irkutsk, Russia
• Died: January 6, 1993
• Place of death: Paris, France

Nureyev elevated the role of the classical male dancer to a status equal to that of a ballerina. His exciting personality attracted a large popular audience to the art of ballet. A partnership with British ballerina Margot Fonteyn revitalized traditional ballets, and together they created innovative new ones. They became one of the most acclaimed duos in all theatrical history. Nureyev’s talent extended beyond classical ballet to modern dance and even musical comedy.

Early Life

Rudolf Nureyev (nur-AY-yehv) was the only son and third child of Hamat, a Red Army political commissar, and Farida, both of Muslim Tatar heritage. His mother named him for her cinema hero, Rudolph Valentino. The family settled in a village near Ufa in Soviet Bashkiria. Although their political connections gave them material advantages when times were good, young Nureyev experienced early deprivation.

From elementary school days, and especially after his mother had taken him to see a performance of traveling entertainers, Nureyev longed to be a dancer. Ballet was one of the few Russian refinements that had survived almost intact from the czarist into the Soviet period. Leading dancers, along with poets and, later, astronauts, were revered heroes. Still, Nureyev’s father, who considered dance impractical and effeminate, heatedly discouraged the activity, wishing his son to become an engineer or doctor.

Displaying from an early age the rebellious spirit that was to characterize him throughout life, Nureyev managed in 1955 to make the long journey to Leningrad. He was accepted by the Leningrad State Choreographic School (renamed the Vaganova Ballet Academy in 1957), which was associated with the world famous Kirov Ballet. Soon he was placed under the direction of Alexander Pushkin, one of the great dance teachers with his own illustrious artistic pedigree. Although Nureyev’s relatively late start in serious ballet training was evident in technical ways, and although he was regarded as something of a behavior problem, his natural talent, interpretive power, and stage presence soon catapulted him from apprentice to soloist with the company. Nevertheless, living and working conditions for a dancer in Leningrad were austere, and Nureyev was frequently in trouble for bending or ignoring rules established by the company.

Life’s Work

Nureyev made rapid progress in his art. Within two years he was well regarded in the discerning world of Soviet ballet. Though still considered rough in technique, his ability to communicate, and his spectacular jumps, made him stand out even within that community of skilled performers. Still, he felt stifled by the rigidity of Soviet ballet. Traveling with his company to Vienna, he observed the social and artistic freedom enjoyed by dancers there. He had also seen a film of the Danish dancer Erik Bruhn and wanted to expand his art through contact with similar artists in other countries. His Soviet keepers, not unaware of his growing restlessness, informed him that in the future he would dance only within the Soviet Union.

When the leading male dancer of the Kirov was injured shortly before a major European tour in 1961, the company had little choice but to allow Nureyev, under heavy KGB surveillance, to replace him. His performances in Paris made him an instant celebrity, and Nureyev looked forward to the next stop on the tour, London, which he believed had the most sophisticated ballet audiences. However, KGB agents monitoring him found that he was an increasing security risk. Not only had he slipped away from his company to fraternize with locals, but his gay sexuality, then regarded as a scandal and crime in Russia, was emerging as well. He was ordered to return home immediately, where he would dance for Soviet premier Nikita S. Khrushchev.

According to a later account by Nureyev, he had made a quick decision to ask for French asylum while in Paris, though it is possible that he may have been plotting his defection even earlier. His reasons were personal and artistic, and he remained apolitical for the rest of his life. Years later, when he was finally able to return to his homeland, it was to say goodbye to his dying mother and dance briefly once more at the Kirov.

In the West, Rudolf first performed with the Grand Ballet du Marquis de Cuevas. He toured Denmark and established both a personal and professional relationship with Bruhn, his idol. His greatest artistic achievements, however, were to come in England, after he met Margot Fonteyn , a British dancer widely regarded as the world’s finest ballerina. Their partnership began in 1962 with Giselle, performed at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London. Although Fonteyn was nineteen years older than Nureyev and had been dancing since before his birth, together they developed an artistry much richer and deeper than either had achieved previously. Those who saw them dance sensed an almost psychic bond and observed that their eyes never left one another. The duo gave life to ballet standards such as Swan Lake, Giselle, Les Sylphides, Swan Lake, and Romeo and Juliet. New ballets were created for them, the most notable being Marguerite and Armand. This ballet was based on the play by the younger Alexandre Dumas, which had formed the basis for the opera La Traviata and the Greta Garbo film Camille. Critics felt that Nureyev had given passion to Fonteyn’s dancing, while she had given poetry to his.

Fonteyn retired from the stage to nurse her ailing husband in Panama, but Nureyev’s career continued undiminished. From 1964 until 1988 he was chief of choreography for the Vienna State Opera, and his production of Don Quixote was perhaps his most notable achievement. Both in Vienna and later at the Paris Opera Ballet, he discovered and developed several notable dancers who went on to have international careers. He befriended the younger Russian dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov, a later defector, and was a generous mentor to other young artists. He tried film acting, appearing as his namesake in Ken Russell’s Valentino (1977), but his interpretive powers, so evident on the stage, did not translate well into cinema. Likewise, his title role in a touring version of The King and I, which would have seemed a natural for him, succeeded only because of his personal celebrity. Always musical, he had a brief, but rewarding, conducting career.

During his years of tireless service to ballet, Nureyev still had time to become a fixture of the international jet set. He lived in lavishly furnished homes and owned a private Italian island. He was frequently photographed with socialites such as Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Elizabeth Taylor, and Princess Margaret. His friends included Mick Jagger and Andy Warhol.

In the 1980’s, Nureyev, like numerous other men in ballet and related arts, discovered that he was HIV positive. In a state of almost total denial, he worked as hard as usual, even as the disease caused by HIV, AIDS, developed. Enduring a variety of experimental treatments and surgeries, he still pursued a rigorous schedule of tours and performances. In his final appearances he was only a sad shadow of the vital young man who had leaped to freedom a few decades before. Having formed his own company, Nureyev and Friends, he was thus able to control his later appearances, to some degree.

Because he was still Nureyev, who had once been such a sublime dancer, his performances remained well booked. At his very last public appearance, taking bows at the end of his own production of La Bayadere at the Palais Garnier in Paris and propped up between two friends, he was named Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et Lettres by the French minister of culture. His death in Paris in 1993 at the age of fifty-four was untimely, largely because his talents were still expanding. He was buried with full honors in a Russian cemetery near Paris.

Significance

If not the greatest male dancer of his time, Nureyev was certainly the most famous. He was handsome, a creature of androgynous beauty, with his finely toned body, flaring nostrils, and expressive face. Few entertainers of any sort during his time had the charisma and stage presence that he exhibited from the beginning. In his form, grace, and athletic ability as well as his poetry his only peer in the history of ballet is perhaps Vaslav Nijinsky, to whom he was frequently compared. In his dancing, directing, and choreography, he broke down barriers between classical, romantic, and modern dance. He is remembered not only as a preeminent artist but as a major cultural hero of the twentieth century. Fortunately, a vast archive of his performances is housed at the New York Public Library.

Bibliography

Kavanagh, Julie. Nureyev: The Life. London: Pantheon, 2007. An eight-hundred-page, thoroughly researched study, enriched by Kavanagh’s intimate knowledge of ballet and the ballet world. Unlike other biographers, she gained access to people who had known Nureyev intimately.

Nureyev, Rudolf. An Autobiography. 1962. New ed. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1993. First published when Nureyev was in his early twenties. Ghostwritten and romantically embellished, yet still retains interest for readers.

Percival, John. Nureyev. New York: Popular Library, 1977. An excellent critique of the dancing of the young Nureyev.

Solway, Diane. Nureyev: His Life. New York: William Morrow, 1999. A highly detailed, carefully researched account of both the personal and professional life of Nureyev.

Soutar, Carolyn. The Real Nureyev: An Intimate Memoir of Ballet’s Greatest Hero. New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 2005. An anecdotal yet often revealing portrait by the stage manager of London’s Coliseum in the 1980’s.

Watson, Peter. Nureyev: A Biography. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1994. A full and credible account, surveying both Nureyev’s talent and his pathology.