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If you read Rudolf Nureyev's life story in a novel, you simply wouldn't believe it. Imagine the synopsis: "A Tatar boy, born on a train, starts ballet far too late, fights his way to prizes and stardom in Russia, escapes from the KGB in a 'dash to freedom' in Paris..." You'd have thrown the book across the room by now, even before you got to the bit where the greatest ballerina in the world, who's twenty years older than him, chooses him as her partner. But it's all true - surely the most extraordinary tale in twentieth century ballet.
His life since that famous dash is documented almost by the minute, but we're still learning more about the time between his birth in 1938 and the day he left Russia - a recent book of memories from colleagues and teachers at the Kirov has helped a lot, telling for instance that he already had a following of 'frenzied fans' in Leningrad when he was no more than twenty, so that his instant popularity in the West was maybe not such a shock to him. His first performances after his defection were with the Ballet of Marquis de Cuevas, in an overdressed production of Sleeping Beauty, but it was his appearances in London with the Royal Ballet, and particularly his first Giselle with Margot Fonteyn, that really established his reputation as a great dancer as well as a media star.
For nearly thirty years Nureyev danced anywhere, everywhere, seemingly every night - his passion for performance was insatiable and he drove himself far harder than any maitre de ballet would have dared. In the end the continual work took its toll on his body and his technique, and the touring programmes of his final years as a dancer saddened many of his admirers. But it was inevitable: he was cut from whole cloth, and the will-power which kept him dancing then was the same will-power which had made him a dancer in the first place.
© Rosemary Winckley
In parallel with his dancing career, Nureyev had spent much time both on original choreography (The Tempest for the Royal Ballet, Romeo and Juliet for London Festival Ballet, Manfred for the Paris Opera) and on reviving 19th century ballets he'd known in his Kirov days - his production of the Shades Scene from La Bayadere for the Royal Ballet, and of Don Quixote in Vienna were the best known of his earlier successes. In 1983 he became the Artistic Director of the Paris Opera Ballet (having previously turned down the corresponding position with the Royal Ballet), and he revived many of his own productions for them. He is credited with bringing new life to the Opera Ballet, restoring it to a postiion as one of the world's great companies and nurturing a whole generation of wonderful stars.
His last production, shortly before his death in January 1993, was a magnificent revival of the first three acts of La Bayadere. Some of the photographs taken of him at the time, haggard and ill, still haunt us: as an antidote, go back and look at the film of him in his own Don Quixote, young, strong, and devastatingly goodlooking and charming. Even the best film, though, doesn't convey the truth about Nureyev the dancer: for the electricity, the danger, the astonishing charisma, you just had to be there.
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