Dancing to Survive

At the age of 51, international ballet superstar Rudolf Nureyev was still dancing with expression and passion, even as his body suffered a rapid decline. The legend dancer was “officially forgotten” in the Soviet Union after his defection in 1961 and is only just being rediscovered here. As a result, the 60th anniversary of his birth is causing quite a stir in Russia. So much so that a Nureyev exhibit  held at Moscow’s Dom Naschokina Gallery, which included photographs and costumes on loan from the French museum Carnavalet and the Nureyev Foundation, lasted a whole month and a half. Russian Life sent Associate Editor Anna Hoare to Naschokina to find out more about the dancer’s colorful life.

On January 6, 1993, Rudolf Nureyev died of AIDS-related causes in Paris. Almost immediately, the debates began. Was Nureyev the artistic genius he had been proclaimed in the West or the pariah depicted by the Soviet authorities? Was he generous and resilient or stingy and given to violent temper tantrums?

Of course, like any great artist, Nureyev was a complicated character. Often compared to Oscar Wilde for his extravagant dress, forthright homosexuality and unwillingness to mince words, Nureyev had, by the end of his life, collected riches beyond belief. But he came from remote and humble beginnings. The son of Muslim Tatars from Bashkiriya, Nureyev was born on a train traversing the shore of Lake Baikal. At the time, his mother Farida was travelling to meet her husband Hamet, a political instructor with the Soviet fleet.

At the age of five, the young Rudolf attended his first ballet – Swan Song, based on an ancient Bashkir legend – and made up his mind then and there to become a dancer. By the age of 15, he was already dancing small parts, and soon after, he started dancing with the Ufa Opera. At 16, having bought a one-way ticket to Moscow to perform at a folk festival, Nureyev auditioned and was accepted into the prestigious Leningrad ballet school, where he studied with well-known dance instructor Alexander Pushkin. Afterwards, he began dancing with St. Petersburg’s Kirov (now Mariinsky) ballet opposite such famous ballerinas as Nataliya Dudinskaya and Alla Shelest.

From 1958 to 1961, Nureyev quickly mastered the entire repertoire of classical ballet – Don Quixote, Giselle, The Nutcracker, Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty and the list goes on. However, in spite of the young dancer’s obvious mastery, he was disliked by the theater administration for his rudeness, emotional outbursts and lack of self-control, as well as his attempts to meet with foreign dancers. In 1961, when the Kirov troupe scheduled a tour to Paris, London and New York, Nureyev was almost left out.

Included on the list as a last-minute understudy, Nureyev nonetheless managed to wow both critics and viewers with his performances at the Paris Grand Opera in Sleeping Beauty and La Bayadere. But, unsatisfied with this arms-length fame, the young dancer would slip away from the hotel and stroll around Paris at night, never balking at the chance to meet with fans.

Of course, someone was keeping a close eye on Nureyev. As the troupe members waited at Paris’ Le Bourget airport for their flight to London, the dancer was surrounded by six Soviet guards and told that he must immediately return to Leningrad. The 23-year-old Nureyev stalled, asking to be allowed to say goodbye to his friends. Then, as Britain’s Daily Express reported, he leaped down the hall yelling in English: “I want to stay in France. These men are kidnapping me. I want French protection. I want to be free.” Later, in the airport police station, where the French granted Nureyev temporary political asylum and flatly refused to let the Soviet guards near him, Nureyev said: “I am finished with Russia. I will never return.” As one of the first Soviet ballet dancers to defect, Nureyev was at first harshly denounced in his homeland, but after the initial furor died down, his name disappeared from the Soviet press altogether.

Though penniless at the airport in Paris (he reportedly had the equivalent of $10 in his pocket), Nureyev quickly went on to achieve great fame and make millions. By the mid-1970s, Nureyev was drawing up to $10,000 per performance, and, by the time of his death, his estate was said to be worth up to $40 mn. But first he had to make a name for himself. After his “leap to freedom” at Le Bourget, Nureyev began dancing with the troupe of the Marquis de Cuevas and soon had the opportunity to meet one of his heroes, the Danish dancer Erik Bruhn, in Copenhagen. The two went on to become close friends, and according to many sources, long-term lovers.

Nureyev had always dreamed of dancing with the Royal Ballet at Convent Garden, and the year after his defection, his wish came true. On February 21, 1962, he danced Giselle at Convent Garden with ballerina Margot Fonteyn, who, though  19 years his senior, would be his partner for the next fifteen years. Together, Nureyev and Fonteyn danced all over the world, performing both classical and modern ballet (Among other highlights, Nureyev appeared in a production of Lucifer by well-known modern dance choreographer Martha Graham). Not content to be limited to dance, Nureyev directed a number of ballets, including an extravagant production of Sleeping Beauty that cost a total of 10 million francs ($1.6 mn). He became ballet director of the Paris Opera in 1983 and its principal choreographer in 1989. At the beginning of the 1980s, he began to study conducting and later made a guest appearance as a conductor with the American Ballet Theater. He appeared on television and in films and even played the King of Siam in the Broadway musical The King and I.

With perestroika, the wall that had been erected against Nureyev in the Soviet Union finally fell. In 1987, after a 25-year absence, he was finally allowed to return to Russia for a two-day visit with his dying mother – who was still living in poverty in the provinces. By the time Nureyev reached her, she was already too ill to recognize him.

In 1989, he once again returned, this time to dance Sylphid at the Kirov theater. By this time, Nureyev’s own illness was well-advanced, and the very next year, he danced his last performance. He was 52 – an almost unheard-of age for performing ballet. In 1993, he staged his last production – La Bayadere – at the Paris Grand Opera. After the premiere, Nureyev was wheeled on stage bundled up in a Scottish rug. As he was awarded the order of the Legion of Honor – France’s highest public service award – the entire hall rose in a standing ovation. Within three months, the great dancer was dead.

But, far from putting an end to the rumors surrounding Nureyev, his death left ample room for speculation. In life, Nureyev had largely managed to keep his private life out of the press. Now it was public property, a free-for-all. New biographies appeared every year, claiming that Nureyev had been warm and funny or stingy and vulgar. They talked about his lovers (Nureyev’s name has been linked with such superstars as Rock Hudson, Freddy Mercury and ballet partner Margot Fonteyn) and his tantrums. They talked about his tightfistedness (the dancer’s personal gofer Simon Robinson recalled that Nureyev thought nothing of spending $50,000 on a statue of a nude male torso, but refused to buy a pair of nail clippers for an employee). Yet, no matter how lurid the rumors, no one was prepared to question Nureyev’s genius or grace.

The scale of the dancer’s fortune was also beyond doubt. At one time, Nureyev owned six homes – two in London, at Fife Road and East Sheen; one in the hills near Cannes; one on the Voltaire embankment in Paris; and two in New York city, in the Dakota Building and Central Park West. Along with this, he owned a farm in Virginia, an island off the coast of Italy and a home in the Antilles. His apartments were decorated with antiques, priceless paintings and bronze sculptures – almost exclusively of nude young men. Christie’s auctioned off the contents of his Paris apartment alone for a total of $2.79 mn.

Before his death, Nureyev established the Rudolf Nureyev Foundation – a charitable organization with the goal of supporting young dancers throughout the world – to which he bequeathed the bulk of his property. Nureyev’s sister, however, bitter that she had been all but cut out of the will, filed suit. In the end, the Foundation was forced to sell a large part of Nureyev’s property in order to pay court fees.

Nureyev’s long-time friend and biographer Mario Bois probably summed up the dancer’s complicated character best: “Rudolf is a centripetal force,” he wrote. “Everything must be directed toward him, everything must be done as he wishes. He speaks quickly, abruptly in imperfect English and broken French. If you ask him to repeat himself, he gets angry.” But Bois went on to praise Nureyev’s quirky, ironic sense of humor and his will to survive, explaining that Nureyev’s legendary acquisitiveness was a way for him to achieve a feeling of peace and security in his hectic life. “He did everything to survive on his feet for a few months more. To lie down meant death. He was interested not in money, but only in dance, the single, the great love of his life. To dance in order to survive a little longer, in order not to die ...”  RL

Russian Life thanks the Dom Naschokina Gallery (Vorotnikovsky per., 12) for photographs and assistance in preparing this article. Photos from Naschokina were also featured in Russian Life’s June 1996 story on sculptor Ernst Neizvestny.