Nureyev : The Life (9780307807342)

by Kavanagh, Julie

  Predictably, though, it was Rudolf everyone wanted to see. Absence of publicity due to a prolonged newspaper strike meant that the Royal Ballet had never before played to so many empty seats. Even Margot’s performances were not sold out, but an underground excitement began to spead about the “new Nijinsky’s” debut in Giselle the following week. On the evening of April 25, for an act and a half the audience took a cool, “show-me” attitude—until Rudolf’s solo. Then they went wild, and at the end of the ballet stood and screamed—“yes, screamed,” said the Herald Tribune’s Walter Terry—for half an hour before flocking to the stage door for a final glimpse of the star.

  After the adulation of the New York public, the critical reaction came as a shock to Rudolf, who felt he had been “pounded.” His performance in Marguerite and Armand was dismissed as histrionic, the ballet itself considered “old-fashioned and danceless.” Even the enthusiastic reviewers were, like the audience, disappointingly impressed by his virtuosity alone (his Giselle solo was described in The New Yorker as “one of the miracles of the current ballet season,” and it was only Terry who commented on the poetic eloquence of his interpretation). The most startling divergence of opinion took place in the Saturday Review, whose regular critic, Irving Kolodin, the music columnist, responded positively, only to be followed in the next issue by John Martin, recently retired from the Times, who wrote a long article Rudolf described as “slashing [me] to shreds.”

  Citing the Kaufman-Hart play The Man Who Came to Dinner as an example of how a guest can take over a household, Martin warns in his article that Rudolf is a disintegrating force in the Royal Ballet, a concern David Webster had already voiced: “While Nureyev could be an asset … he equally might start its dissolution.” Martin continues with a number of valid, even prophetic remarks: Nureyev is an artist who knows his place—“front and center” … he is always essentially in competition with the ballerina … he makes the other male dancers seem inferior for all the wrong reasons … he tinkers with the classics “to give himself all the plums” … The Royal Ballet is simply his vehicle of the moment—“sooner or later he can be confidently expected to depart for pastures that seem greener.” But what undermines these points, turning a considered appraisal into a destructive private vendetta, is the pervading tone of ugly sarcasm—the descriptions of Rudolf’s Blue Bird in “Boris Karloff makeup”; of Albrecht “en travesti”; and most ludicrous of all, the crass dismissal of the Fonteyn-Nureyev partnership: “She has gone, as it were, to the grand ball with a gigolo.”

  Once again, though, Martin’s attempt to discredit the “international glamor boy” had absolutely no effect. Glamour, youth, and personality were the era’s defining attributes, its archetypes America’s young president and his wife. For Jackie Kennedy, these Fonteyn-Nureyev performances were among the most powerful artistic experiences of her life, making up, she said, for having missed seeing Nijinsky and Chaliapin. Having applauded throughout the forty-odd curtain calls for Marguerite and Armand until her hands were “black-and-blue pulp,” the first lady wanted to make her customary visit backstage, but found herself blocked by Hurok, who was “fearful of the political repercussions.” Undeterred, she invited Rudolf, Margot, and a few of their Royal Ballet colleagues to a postperformance supper in her suite at the Carlyle, but gave up when she received a message that Nureyev was not available.* Defying the furious Hurok, Mrs. Kennedy, who was accustomed to getting her own way, then ordered a private plane a few days later to bring the dancers to tea at the White House.

  Since her husband’s inauguration, borrowing paintings and objets d’art from galleries and museums, tracking down and reclaiming pricelesss period furniture, Jackie Kennedy had transformed a characterless official residence into a national showplace. Justifiably proud of her achievements, she led Rudolf, Margot, Ashton, Michael Somes, and the conductor John Lanchbery around the state rooms, pointing out treasures, just as she had done the previous year when she gave her famous televised tour to the nation. After tea she took the group into the Cabinet Room, where she left them, saying that she would go and find out if her husband was free—an opportunity Rudolf immediately seized to see what it felt like to sit in the president’s chair (the old North Carolina porch rocker). Good-naturedly accepting the fact that the White House was becoming “a sort of eating-place for artists,” Jack Kennedy received his wife’s visitors with his customary easy charm, although he would have been the first to admit a lack of enthusiasm for “all that cultural jazz.” Rudolf, on the other hand, immediately appreciated Jackie’s knowledge of and passion for the arts, for antiques, and for excellence in general, and it was this encounter that marked the beginning of their lifelong friendship.

  It was all heady stuff. While moving in high-powered circles and being celebrated as the icon of the age, Rudolf was developing a taste for his own potent mixes of American cocktails—port and ginger ale, “then brandy, then rum, then Negroni.” Arriving at a postperformance reception in Toronto in early June, he immediately drank three whiskey-and-ginger-ales, and cleared the floor to do the Twist with Margot. By 3 a.m., having managed to escape the clutches of a socialite in a white sylphide dress and matching satin shoes, he was in a mood for carousing, oblivious to the fact that Toronto then was “a very, very Waspy, uptight city which rolled up its sidewalks at 10 o’clock.” Pointed down Yonge Street in the direction of his hotel, he was seen performing a series of grands jetés at the intersection with Queen Street, tapping the roofs of cars that had slowed down to watch him. One was a police car. Intending to caution Rudolf, who instinctively lashed out as if to “give us a good kick on the shins,” the inspectors then arrested him for jaywalking. The “very emotional fellow” was driven off in handcuffs to the station, where he was released only after the company’s general manager, the tall, courteous Michael Wood, had been roused from his bed, and managed to convince Toronto’s “wonderful, understanding policemen” that no harm had been intended.

  In Los Angeles, Rudolf stayed high up in the hills with publicist Rupert Allan (the brother of Erik’s friend Christopher), whose partner was the movie producer Frank McCarthy. Surrounded by trees, their house was dark and not particularly comfortable, but they made a great effort to entertain him, inviting a number of movie stars to a party in his honor. He was thrilled to meet Bette Davis, the only woman he included in his personal pantheon of screen idols (Montgomery Clift and Erich von Stroheim were among the men), and he told the actress how much he had admired All About Eve, which he had seen in Russia. When he and Fred Astaire were introduced to each other as the greatest dancers of their time, Rudolf found it hard to respond with appropriate enthusiasm, Astaire then being completely unknown to him. “I found the man affable and charming, but it was impossible for me to see in him a person of legend … we just smiled politely and had nothing really to say.”* Natalie Wood, on the other hand, he recognized immediately from West Side Story. The child of Russian émigrés, born Natalia Nikolaevna Zakharenko, she was exactly the same age as Rudolf, and when at last the food was served, they took their plates into a corner where they talked excitedly in Russian. Watching their growing abandon, one of the guests imagined they were saying to each other, “ ‘So … they think we are just behaving like a couple of peasants? We’ll show them!’ They started eating their chicken legs with their fingers … crunching the bones and chucking the debris on the carpet.”

  Cecil Beaton, who was in Hollywood working on designs for the film of My Fair Lady, approached Rudolf cautiously that evening, their last encounter having been the tempestuous dress rehearsal at Covent Garden. But instead of being cold and disdainful, the mildly drunk Rudolf was surprisingly affectionate. “We hugged and kissed and … it was all very agreeable and an amusing comedy,” said Beaton, who then found himself listening to a string of grievances: People were being very mean to him, Rudolf told him; he was not going to leave, but they would have to pay him properly. He said he was going to continue dancing for television in New York, b
ut grumbled about having to pay most of what he earned in U.S. taxes. Later, noticing that the dancer had disappeared from the party, Beaton went upstairs, where he found Rudolf alone in his room, sitting on the edge of his bed, dangling a loose shoe.

  “What are you doing here? Are you sad?”

  “Yes and very lonely—this awful house—you suffer so. Maybe I have five days in Paris with my friend, but we have been travelling a month without meeting; and when you love you are apt to be sad and there’s no hope for us. We can’t work together. It is always travelling for me; always on the road—without a window.… Nobody understands me, perhaps Margot a little from time to time, and Freddy’s nice, but he offers me nothing, and they hate me. But I don’t care.”

  Rudolf must also have confided his discontent to the Hollywood designer Jean Louis* and his wife, as the ebullient Maggie Louis immediately wrote Rudolf a letter “full of exciting new schemes.” They had talked to one of the heads of Universal Pictures about the idea of his doing a film part that had nothing to do with dance, and they volunteered to raise the finances, should he want to start a ballet company of his own “or in partnership with Margot or Eric [sic] or anyone else you chose.” When the tour ended, they invited Rudolf to join them at their Malibu beach house—“You do know how much we love you … even though our friendship is so new—” but Rudolf wanted to see Erik, who was waiting for him in Paris. On his last day in America, having spent ten hours in a Brooklyn TV studio filming the Diana and Acteon duet with Svetlana Beriosova, he rushed straight to Idlewild Airport as soon as the last take was finished, and caught a 9:30 flight that night.

  After a few days together in the city, the two dancers drove down to the South of France in Erik’s convertible, Rudolf looking “more St. Tropez than the Tropezians” in a striped jersey and beret. People in the port recognized him immediately and followed the car shouting his name. “No one even noticed the equally great but less sensational Danish star.” The remark is that of Ruth Page, who spent the summers in a converted Provençal olive-oil mill two villas away from Brigitte Bardot. Rudolf had planned to stay overnight with the Fishers and practice in Ruth’s studio, but the sea had flooded the floor, and there was no available bed, so they left, heading for Monte Carlo, as Rudolf was impatient to see the house that friends had just bought on his behalf.

  Marika Besobrasova, a White Russian who ran Monte Carlo’s internationally renowned dance school, had met Rudolf in July 1961 when she and her husband, Roger-Felix Médecin, traveled to Geneva to see him perform with the de Cuevas company. Spotting the dancer walking with a heavy bag outside the theater, Marika called out to him, offering him a lift. Although startled to hear his name spoken in a Russian accent, Rudolf recognized Roger, a Monegasque lawyer, whom he had once seen in a Paris café with Pierre Lacotte, and agreed to go with them into town. When they spoke Russian, Marika was curious to know why Rudolf used the same language she did—“the old words, not Soviet speak.” “I was never a Communist!” he told her sharply. However, when they began discussing ballet in depth, and he saw how receptive Marika was to his profound knowledge of St. Petersburg schooling, Rudolf lowered his defenses. He also felt comfortable with Roger, who had grown up with the children of the Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo dancers and so was close to the ballet world without being professionally involved. The couple helped him buy a Bell & Howell movie camera “for my dancing,” and when they parted, gave Rudolf their telephone number, urging him to come and stay with them in Monte Carlo. Not long afterward the phone rang late one night, and they heard a voice saying, “You remember me? You invite me.” They collected Rudolf from Nice airport and took him home to their apartment, beginning what was to be a lifelong friendship.

  Roger-Felix’s skills as a notary and Marika’s sisterly devotion made them the ideal people to find him a property in the South of France. Within weeks of arriving in the West, he had discovered a passion for the Mediterranean—“A sort of celestial privilege—for me who came from a cold, icy country, with a sun high and hardly tepid”—and the moment he felt he was earning sufficient and consistent money, “began also to look for my sea.” Anywhere on the coast would cost a fortune, Marika told him, but for $69,000 they had found him somewhere in the hills, with distant views of the Bay of Monaco: Villa Arcadie. Built into the rocks of Mount Agel, the roughcast stone house stands in a large wild and wooded garden about a kilometer above the small, shuttered town of La Turbie. Rudolf was delighted with it. “Outside, mountains, sky and not a human being in sight; inside big white spaces.” Its empty white stucco rooms divided by wrought-iron gates would remind one friend of a Greek chapel; and later, when Rudolf had added a Gothic arch, candelabra, and heavy, medieval leather-covered furniture, another would compare the interior to the set of Camelot. To the Fishers, however, who drove down a week or so later to see Rudolf’s new property, it seemed illogically palatial. “What does he want with a grand villa like that? A capitalist at heart!”

  This was true enough. Within weeks of defecting, Rudolf had made up his mind to demand the highest fees possible, believing that money was what “decides one’s worth” in the West. It had never been an issue in Leningrad, where, ever since his student days, his food and lodgings had been free—provided either by the Vaganova Academy or by the Pushkins. When he defected in Paris he owned nothing apart from the clothes he was wearing and basic essentials bought for him by Clara and Raymundo. His salary with de Cuevas, combined with German and American television fees, had been large enough to buy Villa Arcadie, but now, as “permanent guest star” with the Royal Ballet, Rudolf’s expectations were much higher. Having dinner after a performance with ballerina Nadia Nerina, Rudolf turned to her husband, Charles Gordon, a wealthy financier, and said, “Charlik, Erik say you help me. I am poor man—no money. I want to make money. Tax free!” The ballerina’s agent was Sandor Gorlinsky, a Hungarian émigré who had made himself as eminent as Sol Hurok by managing such stars as Maria Callas and Tito Gobbi. Contacting Gorlinsky on Rudolf’s behalf, Gordon suggested forming an offshore investment company in Luxembourg, which would be “owned by Rudolf” and have the sole right to receive fees paid to him without deductions. Until now Rudolf had been using his New York bank account to deposit his income, “not necessarily money earned in the U.S.,” and the Internal Revenue Service had begun hounding him for $30,642.70 in back taxes. He and Margot had also been advised to avoid massive tax demands by staying out of England until the end of the fiscal year the following April. (In September, David Webster warned the board that the pair’s Covent Garden appearances would be limited because of the income tax regulations about residence.)

  Most people assumed that Rudolf’s villa had been bought in order to take advantage of tax benefits offered to Monte Carlo residents, but although overlooking the principality of Monaco it is, in fact, situated in the French Alpes Maritimes.* Arcadie was Rudolf’s first attempt to put down roots in the West; he loved its beauty and isolation—“Sometime I go there and not come back”—and created a calm, lyrical atmosphere with light flowing through the rooms, a log fire, and music constantly playing.† He had only just moved in when Maude and Nigel, who were staying at a hotel nearby, wound their way up the hairpin bends one evening to visit him. When they arrived, Rudolf was there alone, grilling a chop over the open flame with rosemary from the garden, but immediately exclaimed, “Come and see my view!” Taking Maude by the hand, he helped steer them in the dark to the front of the house. Even though it was a moonless night, the panorama was breathtaking, stretching from the shadowy ruins of a Doric colonnade below all the way down to the lights of the Corniche and the distant coast of Italy.

  But Rudolf had little time to spend at his new house that summer, as he and Margot were heading a small troupe of Royal Ballet dancers on a world tour. Earlier, he and Erik had discussed the idea of forming another quartet of stars, this time with Margot and the Italian ballerina Carla Fracci, whom the two men would alternately partner. But Margot wanted neit
her to share Rudolf with Fracci nor to dance with Erik, and so the plan was dropped. Nevertheless Rudolf was determined that Erik should accompany him, and asked the Australian tour manager, Joan Thring, if he could be included. No was the answer she came back with—“We can’t really afford it.” A day or so later Rudolf came up to Joan and handed her a clutch of unused air tickets, which he presumed could be exchanged: “I had to tell him they were useless, and they were flung at me. I was screamed at. Punched. I didn’t know when I took this on that I was going to be beaten up every day.”

  This initial encounter set a pattern of mock S&M, with Joan, a tall, chic former model, her waist-long hair coiled into a large bun, frequently playing the role of dominatrix. (“You crack good whip!” Rudolf would eventually compliment her at the end of the tour.) To keep the peace it was decided to take Erik as far as Greece, their first stop, where he could mount duets from Flower Festival at Genzano and La Sylphide. However, the truce between Rudolf and Joan did not last long. On the plane to Athens he asked her if she had booked him a room with a double bed, and at her reply, “Not specifically,” spat out a Russian expletive and stalked back to his seat. Deciding “If I let this pass, I’m ruined,” she marched up to where Rudolf and Erik were sitting, and demanded to know the meaning of the word. The noun pizda (“cunt”) is one of the four cornerstone obscenities known in Russian as mat—underground street words that have far more impact than their English four-letter equivalents, and are never used in a woman’s hearing.* When Erik asked Joan what had caused the outburst, she explained, relishing Rudolf’s evident embarrassment. “He was shrivelling by that time. Shrivelling.”