Rudolf (Hametovich) Nureyev - Early life and career at the Kirov, Defection to the West, Fonteyn and Nureyev, Later career

Ballet dancer, born in Irkutsk, in southern Siberian Russia. He studied at the Leningrad Choregraphic School, and became a soloist with the Kirov Ballet. While touring with the Ballet in 1961, he obtained political asylum in Paris, and became an Austrian citizen in 1982. He made his debut at Covent Garden with the Royal Ballet in 1962, and became Fonteyn's regular partner. His virtuosity and expressiveness made him one of the greatest male dancers of the 1960s, in both classical and modern ballets. He began to choreograph and dance for many European companies, and became ballet director of the Paris Opéra Ballet (19839) and principal choreographer (198992). In his later years he also began to conduct, leading orchestras in the USA, Europe, and the former Soviet Union. His autobiography, Nureyev, appeared in 1962.

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

Early life and career at the Kirov

Nureyev was born on a train near Irkutsk, while his mother was travelling across Siberia to Vladivostok, where his father Hamat, a Red Army political commissar was stationed.

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, when he was sent to the Vaganova Choreographic Institute, attached to the Kirov Ballet in Leningrad.

Within two years Nureyev was one of the Soviet Union's best-known dancers, in a country which revered the ballet and made national heroes of its stars.

Defection to the West

In 1961 Nureyev's luck turned. 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. It has been the more popular and accepted belief that he "leaped to freedom" in order to be more of a "free artist", though many of Nureyev's private accounts of the events in Paris in 1961, as well the accounts of many of his close friends, tell that he stayed in the west due to the consequences of living in Soviet Russia and being gay. So, on 17 June 1961, at the Paris Airport, Rudolf Nureyev defected.

Within a week after defecting, Nureyev was signed up by the Grand Ballet du Marquis de Cuevas and was performing The Sleeping Beauty with Nina Vyroubova. Nureyev was an instant celebrity in the west.

Nureyev's defection also gave him the personal freedom he had been denied in the Soviet Union. The relationship was a stormy one, for Nureyev was highly sexually promiscuous. 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, he was invited to dance once again with the Kirov Ballet at the Maryinsky theatre in Leningrad (now renamed Saint Petersburg). Nonetheless, 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, where his mother lived.

Fonteyn and Nureyev

Nureyev's first appearance in England was at a ballet matinee 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. Their first performance together was at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, in Giselle on February 21 1962, when the applause of the audience lasted longer than the ballet itself.

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 to Liszt's B minor piano sonata, which became their signature piece. He did much for the Royal Ballet, whose 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. 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

In 1964 he came to the Vienna State Opera, where he remained as a dancer and chief of choreography till 1988.

Nureyev was immediately in demand by film-makers, and in 1962 he made his screen debut in a film version of Les Sylphides. He branched into modern dance with the Dutch National Ballet in 1968.

During the 1970s, Nureyev appeared in several movies and toured the United States in a revival of the Broadway musical The King and I. 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.

¹) 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.

Personality

Nureyev's talent, beauty, and charm caused him to be forgiven many things, but stardom did little to improve his temperament.

By the end of the 1970s he moved into his 40s and faced the inevitable decline of his amazing physical prowess, he unfortunately continued to tackle the big classical roles for far too long, and his rather undistinguished performances in the late 1980s disappointed many of his admirers. Towards the end of his life, he was wracked with the ravages of AIDS, but he still worked tirelessly on productions for the Paris Opera Ballet. His last work was a lavish, beautiful production of La Bayadere which closely follows the Kirov Ballet version he danced as a young man. At Margot Fonteyn's urging, he also started to conduct concerts and ballets.

Influence and AIDS

Nureyev's influence on the world of ballet changed especially the perception of male dancers; The second very important influence was his crossing the borders between classical ballet and modern dance by dancing both, although having been trained as a classical dancer. Today it is absolutely normal for dancers to get training in both styles but Nureyev was the one who started this and it was a sensation and even much criticized in his days.

When AIDS appeared in France in about 1982, Nureyev, like many homosexual men, took little notice. Towards the end of his life, as dancing became more and more agonizing for him, he resigned himself to small non-dancing roles, and dabbled with the idea of becoming a conductor.

Eventually, however, he had to face the fact that he was dying. At his last appearance, at a 1992 production of La Bayadère at the Palais Garnier, Nureyev received an emotional standing ovation from the audience. (Link to photographs.)