To Susse Wold the dark moods and recurrent dreams and nightmares were no more than manifestations of Erik’s nationality. “There was a reason Shakespeare made Hamlet a Dane.” But she also attributes his escapes from reality (and there were many) to a mystical, rather than pathological, side. “Erik had a hard time being in the here and now.… He would disappear like he’d disappeared in the apple tree when he was a child.”
It was not until the end of that week that Rudolf finally tracked down Erik, who had taken three times longer than he should have to drive to Copenhagen because of agonizing spasms in his back. During the course of their emotional telephone conversation, Erik told him that he never again wanted to be with people who would “play off” their relationship. “I said to him … that I am the only one who could say get out and I could not explain myself.”
By now it was the end of July and they both badly needed a holiday. Rudolf persuaded Erik to come to Monte Carlo, where he was hoping to buy a house. The town was full of dancers that summer, and one night they met Anna Pavlova’s partner Edward Caton, then giving classes at the ballet school. Born in St. Petersburg and taught by Vaganova herself, he held them fascinated with his stories and insights. “He could explain Pavlova and show them, with his big feet and big shoes, the grand manner of a danseur noble.”
Borrowing a Monegasque friend’s beach tent, they spent long relaxing days in the sun, photographed together in a pedal boat, seemingly at peace with the world. Only a week or so later, however, Rudolf again found himself caught up in a deeply neurotic, Strindbergian situation. He had moved into the Bruhns’ house in Gentofte, where the atmosphere was overshadowed by the recent death of Erik’s beloved aunt Minna and the serious illness of his mother. Visibly in pain that seemed to worsen by the day, Ellen Bruhn virtually ignored Rudolf. “A gruesome person” in the opinion of many, she had always had a profoundly destructive relationship with Erik, whose own feelings toward her were so complex that he would use his 1967 production of Swan Lake to explore the oedipal intensity of the Prince’s relationship with his mother. Also staying with them was Sonia Arova, whom Erik was to partner in a centennial gala at the Tivoli Gardens. As his mother was making it quite clear that she did not want Rudolf in the house, Sonia advised Erik, who felt unhappily divided in his loyalties, that he should show her more consideration and make Rudolf move to a hotel. “Plus Rudi and Erik were having tremendous fights.” Rudolf did leave, but not for long; profiting from Sonia’s departure for Paris, he immediately moved back into the house.
On an evening when Erik and Rudolf were having dinner with Vera Volkova, one of Erik’s sisters telephoned to say that their mother had just been taken by ambulance to the hospital. Erik left immediately, but by the time he arrived, Ellen Bruhn was dead. He had not been forewarned of this, but was taken directly into the ward. “I saw that she was lying there covered up with a sheet. I was told that she had died only a short while before.” He went straight back to the house, where he called Volkova to tell her what had happened. “Rudik immediately got on the phone and said he would come home right away.” “Rudi was the one who reacted spontaneously on this,” Susse Wold says. “And his reaction helped Erik to release his feelings. If someone is able just to hold you … without words … to take you in their arms and just be there. That is what he did.” Although scheduled to fly to New York the next day, Rudolf told Erik that he would stay on for a few more days so that he didn’t have to be alone in the house. His devotion touched Erik deeply. “He could have run away, but he didn’t.”
Rudolf was in New York rehearsing another Bell Telephone Hour TV appearance (Le Corsaire duet with Lupe Serrano), when a letter from Erik arrived.
My dear Rudic,
I wonder how you are … I feel very lonely here in the house, I keep thinking of my mother and then my aunt too. They meant so much to me, and in some way, they are both very much alive to me. I have been thinking of you too, yes us both, the future. Are we really happy together, or is it pretentious of me to believe that some happiness should exist where we can overcome and forget a bit of ourselves, our egotism and desires. There have been tensions, fights, problems of overcoming ourselves between us, only desperate fights or sudden deaths seem to calm us, but only for a day or two and then it seems we are back to the same again like the rest of the world. I kept on believing all the time, but now, it seems to me unrealistic to believe in something good, at least in this life. I need to be calmed too. I have my difficult periods with myself, then I go my own way alone, to get rid of them. I need help at those moments, but spiritually, not physically. You talk every so often about your body, but Rudik, it is your mind, without mind or heart, you would not feel your body at all. You can get calm by exhausting your body, but like I can’t ask myself to come to you only for physical reasons, then it is just another body which you can get anywhere. Maybe as you said that next year, we will be together more but what will be next year? We failed to be together, failed to believe that there is a future while and when we were together. With all my heart and love which still is in my heart I wish you to find some happiness wherever you are. Erik.
The letter’s valedictory tone came as a tremendous shock to Rudolf. When they parted in Copenhagen, it felt as if they had never been so close, and although they had not been in touch since, this was only because Rudolf had been engulfed by work—something another dancer should understand. He wrote back immediately, desperate to convince Erik of his belief in their love and future, but his letter crossed with a second from Erik, this time written in a manic mood swing “of joy and warmth”:
When you had to leave I thought and felt like something died in me, like I would never see you again. I have only you left in my life, the only person alive I love and who is alive to me. It was depressing to think we were going such separate ways in our work that we were always on the move … with so many indifferent people around us.… I don’t feel like going out because people ask and feel sorry for me.… So many sad things have happened to me this year, yet.… I forget that something wonderful and beautiful happened when I met you. I shall be grateful in spite of everything else and I will be happy to see you any time here for a moment I will treasure be assured you are my life and I love you deeply.
A third immediately followed, dated September 20:
My dearest, my darling, got your letter just now. Can you forgive me? I cannot even think exactly how I wrote that first letter only my conditions were so bad. I hope you will understand and forgive. I saw death around me all the time, I was lost, had no-one near me to help or to feel any life. I have hardly slept since you left.… I drive so much around so not to be here alone in the house but Rudic my love, I do feel better and it’s because of you and your letter, assuring me of a love I need so badly and also to give, and I did not hear from you it seemed like years. Oh my darling, please don’t worry. As long as we love we will make and work for a happy future together.
At the beginning of October, Rudolf went to Chicago to dance in the opera company’s productions of The Merry Widow and Prince Igor, breaking off rehearsals to fly back to New York, where Erik was stopping briefly en route to Australia. After spending a “wonderful” recuperative two days together, they parted again—this time for two months.
It was Chicago Opera Ballet’s Ruth Page, dancer, director, and choreographer, who had pulled off the coup of getting Rudolf to make his American debut with her company at BAM in Manhattan in 1962. A warm, vivacious woman with a great sense of style, she was a close friend of Margot, who, during the Nervi festival, had encouraged her to get to know Rudolf better. Ruth’s husband was Tom Fisher, an ebullient, wealthy lawyer as cosmopolitan and hospitable as she. Their circle extended far beyond the world of ballet to include actors, directors, couturiers, poets, and publishers, whom they often entertained at their large penthouse apartment on Lakeshore Drive. It was there they had invited Rudolf to stay during his Chicago performances—though with some misgivings, having received a letter
from Christopher Allan warning that the dancer’s long-distance telephone bills would be huge. “I know he wants to pay for them, but sometimes he gets vague about details.” As things turned out, however, Rudolf could not have been an easier houseguest: “As long as he got a steak, plenty of tea, a little whiskey, a massage, a game of chess (which he played with my husband), and a telephone call to Erik in Australia, he was very undemanding.”
At the theater it was a different story. When Ruth showed him the costume he was expected to wear as the Tatar chieftain, he went straight to the window to throw it into the river—“I grabbed it just in time”—and when another was produced that pleased him, he ordered it to be cut to bare his midriff. Chicago Opera’s Prince Igor was a fine production, which retained the original Roerich designs and had a cast headed by the Bulgarian bass Boris Christoff and a chorus singing in Russian. Nevertheless, having discovered that the Bolshoi would be in town at the same time, Rudolf told Ruth “how very good Igor will have to be,” and insisted on making improvements. She had strong ideas of her own about Fokine’s dances, having performed the Polovtsian girl with Adolph Bolm (who created the leading male role), but was willing all the same to let the choreography be “fancied up” for Rudolf. True to form, he did much as he pleased, substituting more spectacular steps, and introducing breaks between his leaps to catch his breath. “I don’t think Fokine would have approved of that,” she commented. “Anyway, it was a thrilling performance.”
Waiting for Rudolf in London were two letters from Erik, the first describing his arrival in Australia, where he had been met at the airport by a large turnout of journalists. “Even TV was there,” he remarked, adding provocatively, “I felt almost like a ‘star.’ ” The second, written a week later, expresses his delight that Rudolf had timed his own letter for the opening night in Sydney. “I can hardly believe that I am holding something you touched and I read & read again your words.… I pray that you will have enough strength to be alone for all this time.” Within days, however, Erik had retreated again, and was torturing Rudolf by refusing to take his calls. Suffering from the continuing shock of losing his mother, he was convinced that he had in some way “helped the illness that precipitated her death.”* Longing for absolution, he turned for support to Sonia, his partner throughout the tour, whom he knew his mother had liked and trusted. “For the two months we were there, we talked every night till 5 a.m. It all had to come out.” It was Sonia who answered the telephone when Rudolf called, and when he begged to be put through to Erik would tell him gently, “No, Rudi, Erik can’t talk to you tonight.” Sonia and Rudolf would then discuss the situation at length—“London to Australia!”
Inevitably Erik’s unattainability only fanned Rudolf’s frenzy; the more ardor he displayed, the more distant Erik grew. This obsessive love was beginning to overshadow Rudolf’s dancing. He called it “the Curse”—and he vowed never again to commit himself with such intensity. “Better to have stone in place of heart!” he exclaimed in despair one day to Margot. Familiar herself with the torments of an unstable relationship, she was already becoming Rudolf’s salvation—not as the woman in love adored by the public but as the defuser and conduit of his passion.
*Danilova remembers Balanchine confirming this.” The people always ask, ‘Why you didn’t invite big star like Nureyev?’ Mr. B. said, ‘All right. Presume I ask him. He will dance one ballet. Everybody will come in and see him. He goes, and people will say, “He is gone. The ballet is nothing without him.” ’ And it shouldn’t be like that. It would be different if he want to be member and learn all the parts like the others.” (Quoted in David Daniel’s interview for Nureyev Observed.)
*But the remark to which Rudolf is referring appeared nearly three years after his New York debut. In London’s Sunday Times dated December 27, 1964, he is quoted as saying, “I know at any rate that Balanchine—who is, after all, still the greatest modern choreographer—will never create a work for a man. He’s never been interested in male dancers—he’s tended to eliminate and even emasculate them.”
*Born a year earlier than the dancer, Manuel Benitez Peres—El Cordobés—had also left a life of poverty in the provinces and headed north to the city “as though being pulled.” In 1957, sharing the same fanatical drive, he anticipated Rudolf’s own so-called leap to fame by jumping into the bullring at Las Ventas, which made him front-page news.
*Balanchine would have argued that people confuse dushevnyi with dukhovnyi (spiritual). “Tchaikovsky’s music isn’t soulful, it’s spiritual.” (Solomon Volkov, Balanchine’s Tchaikovsky.)
*At Sonia Arova’s suggestion Erik arranged for his mother to undergo an autopsy on his return. “This … finally put him at rest.” (Transcript of John Gruen’s interview for his biography Erik Bruhn.)
10 THE HORSE WHISPERER
On November 3, 1962, Rudolf and Margot made their debut in the grand pas de deux from Le Corsaire, which, although only a gala fragment, was even more astonishing than their Giselle. The thrill of the conceit lay in the match of a barely clothed, semibarbaric Tatar with England’s prima ballerina assoluta—as incongruous together, or so it seemed, as in the well-known photograph of them offstage: he in a gondolier-striped T-shirt, sandals, and pornographically tight shorts; she in Dior, white gloves, and pearls.
Once again Rudolf had thrown out the costume designed for him, replacing it with his own, Bakst-inspired ensemble of filmy harem pants, a silver-mesh bolero, and a thin band encircling his flying hair. Looking like an escaped slave from Scheherazade, masculine in the power of his leaps, feminine in his pulled-up placing and the Oriental delicacy of his arms, he invoked the sexual mystique and lurid theatricality of the legendary Ballets Russes seasons while making the role entirely his own. From his first unleashed run onstage, Rudolf’s personality, as Alexandra Danilova said, “just pours.” Working every sinew to flaunt the beauty of his body, he is god both of earth and air, using the elasticity of gravity-drawn fondus to rebound in space and sit there, for several seconds, “en tailleur.” His final pose at Margot’s feet enacts the duality in his own nature of arrogance and humility: As he commands the audience to look at her, he is at the same time exulting in the miracle of himself, his imperious profile and grand St. Petersburg épaulement angled to perfection. “I had animal power, yes, but there was a finesse. I am not a brutal force. There’s a subtlety.”
The heart-bursting, percussive impact of a bravura showpiece, though “bang-on Nureyev territory,” was quite new to Covent Garden. Rudolf had taught Margot a simplified version of the role originally created by Dudinskaya, but she strugged with it at first, and at the premiere was gently written off as miscast. Within three performances, however, she had mastered the technical hazards and was able to deliver all the razzmatazz while retaining the calm integrity of her line. “I never saw her so liberated,” Ninette de Valois remarked. “The confidence it gave her was incredible. It was a development of somebody who suddenly had about ten years taken off her.”
Waiting in the wings for her entrance, the ballerina admitted that she found it so exhilarating to watch Rudolf that she lost all nervousness for herself. She claimed that it was her belief that the audience was looking at him, not her, that had allowed her to relax, and “really dance for the first time.” And yet this was not self-gratifying exhibitionism on Rudolf’s part, but a true partnership. He had to share a stage with Margot, a star with a real presence of her own. They borrowed from each other, and if Rudolf had “brought her out,” she, in turn, “brought him up.” “For him,” as Violette Verdy says, “it was the beginning of a taming of sorts—without losing the primitive thing, but learning how to show it in a more artistic way.” Comparing film footage of Rudolf’s Corsaires, one sees how the ruffian edge of his 1958 student performance has been refined; the foreshortened puppet arms and raised shoulders giving way to expansive, expressive port de bras, the hectic hit-and-miss poses now flawlessly photogenic and controlled.
Margot’s revelation
that she, with her immense prestige, took Rudolf seriously as an artist had helped to neutralize the shock of his initial notoriety. “We have to remember what Rudolf looked like back then on a staid British stage,” says writer and photographer Keith Money: “The bare midriff and all that glitzy Soviet campery were to some the absolute height of bad taste.” Most people, however, were transported by the sight of this exquisite youth yearning up toward Margot as the curtain fell, his fingers splayed, his back arched and pelvis thrust forward—“like a great Moslem whore.” And it was not only his passion and animality that were so stirring, but the speculation their union prompted about the ballerina’s own sexual depths. It made Verdy think of the King Kong legend—a “scene of seduction and cruelty … like the whole thing really was a bedroom … and you were watching through the keyhole.”
Tito Arias was in the audience on the first night, and amid all the shouting and cheering—an unprecedented tumult that, as predicted, lasted twice as long as the duet itself—could be heard his mocking sibilant cries of “Sexy pants!” Rudolf had always suspected that Margot’s husband made fun of him behind his back, and he resented Tito’s superciliousness—“that jokey superiority.” The antipathy was mutual. To Tito, Rudolf was a threat—not in a sexually competitive sense but because he felt that the dancer, “a sort of urchin opportunist,” jeopardized the Establishment role he expected Margot to play. “Tito saw life in chess moves,” says Money. “For one’s wife to be all over the newspapers performing with a renegade Soviet dance beatnik was a ‘wrong move.’ Pawn damaging Queen’s territory.”
In fact, although she was considered to be the apotheosis of restraint and respectability, Margot’s South American origins and Eastern upbringing made her as intrinsically un-English as her Tatar partner. The two dancers’ styles were as complementary as they were disparate; their physical expressiveness and purity of line showing just how much of the Russian school each had inherited. Theirs was an equality of talents, a similar way of looking at things: “It’s as though we work on parallel lines,” Margot once said. “We have the same attitude towards what we’re trying to do.” Even their differences harmonized onstage, blending into an effect much like the neo-impressionists’ “simultaneous contrast,” in which diverse colors seen from a distance recompose in the eye of the spectator to produce new shades, themselves enhanced by reaction with the others. And evidence of this mutual intensification creating a mirage of shimmering luminosity was there for all to see in their performance of Les Sylphides three nights later.
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