Nureyev : The Life (9780307807342)

by Kavanagh, Julie

  1.57 On the road: Courtesy of the Rudolf Nureyev Dance Foundation

  1.58 With Armen Bali: © Jeannette Etheredge

  1.59 Wallace Potts and Jeannette Etheredge: Courtesy of Wallace Potts

  1.60 With Leslie Caron: Courtesy of Leslie Caron

  1.61 With Monique van Vooren and Maria Tallchief: © Louis Pérez; courtesy of Robert Greskovic

  1.62 With Douce François: © Patrice Picot, Jour de France

  1.63 With Tessa Kennedy: Courtesy of Tessa Kennedy

  1.64 With Princess Firyal: © Tessa Kennedy

  1.65 With Franck Raoul-Duval: © Tessa Kennedy

  1.66 In Turkey with Maude and Nigel Gosling: © Tessa Kennedy

  1.67 With Wallace, Douce, and Robert Tracy. © Tessa Kennedy

  1.68 With Stephen Sherriff, Yasemin Pirinccioglu, Jane Herman, Wallace, and Douce: Courtesy of the Rudolf Nureyev Dance Foundation

  1.69 Being led offstage by Charles Jude: Courtesy of Charles Jude

  1.70 Kenneth Greve: © 2007 The Richard Avedon Foundation. Courtesy The Richard Avedon Foundation

  1.71 Charles Jude and Elisabeth Platel: Courtesy of the Rudolf Nureyev Dance Foundation

  1.72 Rehearsing Don Quixote: © Francette Levieux

  1.73 The dining room at Quai Voltaire: © Douce François

  1.74 Preparing to conduct: © Alexandra della Porta Rodigni

  1.75 The last vacation: © Jeannette Etheredge

  1.76 Ezio Frigerio’s memorial: © Olivier Perrin

  About the Author

  Julie Kavanagh is the author of Secret Muses: The Life of Frederick Ashton. She lives in London with her husband and two sons.

  Rudik as a toddler with his mother, Farida. (illustration credit 1.1)

  Rudik’s father, Hamet, right, photographed with a student friend in Kazan. (illustration credit 1.2)

  Hamet’s own photograph, below; a highly popular leader, he arranged singing and dancing groups for his Red Army comrades. (illustration credit 1.3)

  A summer vacation, above, for the Nureyev children and their cousins in Asanova. In the group shot below, Rudik is in the front row, second from left, with his sister Razida on his right. (illustration credit 1.4)

  Their cousin Amina is in the second row, far left, next to Rosa Nureyeva. Rudik’s third sister, Lilia, is in the second row, far right. (illustration credit 1.5)

  The teenage Rudik displaying his innate, unconfined elevation in an Ufa ballet studio. (illustration credit 1.6)

  Two of Rudik’s first mentors with their pupils. Elena Voitovich, left, the tall, bohemian ballet mistress at the Ufa Theatre, and motherly Irina Alexandrovna, the theatre’s piano accompanist. (illustration credit 1.7)

  Rudik, left, with an Ufa gang friend. (illustration credit 1.8)

  Posing outside the Nureyevs’ isba on Zentsova Street. (illustration credit 1.9)

  Alexander Ivanovich Pushkin teaching his class of male students at the Vaganova Academy. (illustration credit 1.10)

  Alexander and Xenia Pushkin on their honeymoon in the Ukraine. (illustration credit 1.11)

  The Pushkins photographed in their Rossi Street bed by Teja Kremke, mid-1960s. (illustration credit 1.12)

  Marietta Frangopoulo, curator of the Vaganova Academy museum. To her pupils she was “a goddess … so erudite and had seen everybody dance.” (illustration credit 1.13)

  Clowning for the camera in the Vaganova dormitory, 1957. (illustration credit 1.14)

  Rehearsing in a Vaganova studio with Alla Sizova, ca. 1958. (illustration credit 1.15)

  The portrait of himself which Teja gave to Xenia. (illustration credit 1.16)

  The Cuban dancer Menia Martinez, Rudik’s Leningrad sweetheart and fellow student at the Vaganova Academy. (illustration credit 1.17)

  Left: Dancing the solo from Le Corsaire during an April 1958 national ballet school contest in Moscow; the Bolshoi immediately offered him a soloist contract. (illustration credit 1.18)

  Above: Tamara Zakrzhevskaya, a Leningrad fan who became one of Rudik’s closest friends. (illustration credit 1.19)

  Below: The Romankov family, with the twins, Rudik’s lifelong friends, Leonid and Liuba. (illustration credit 1.20)

  With the legendary Kirov ballerina Natalia Dudinskaya performing Laurentia. (illustration credit 1.21)

  Soaring above the Kirov stage as Frondoso in Laurentia, April 1959. (illustration credit 1.22)

  As Albrecht with his first Giselle, the delicate Irina Kolpakova. (illustration credit 1.23)

  With idol Alla Shelest in the act 1 pas de deux from Giselle. (illustration credit 1.24)

  “Sit down on suitcase for a minute. It is old Russian superstition. Will work.” (illustration credit 1.25)

  Rudolf and Margot in the final pose from Le Corsaire, which inconcruously paired England’s prima ballerina assoluta with a barely clothed, semibarbaric Tatar boy. (illustration credit 1.26)

  Rehearsing Swan Lake in the Royal Ballet studios at Baron’s Court. Rudolf’s insistence on tampering with this hallowed classic incurred the wrath of the dance press. (illustration credit 1.27)

  Below left: Rudolf and Margot’s 1962 Giselle was a ground-breaking, stirring event that led their public to believe in a real-life, offstage romance. (illustration credit 1.28)

  Below right: Margot’s mark on Rudolf had never been more apparent than in Swan Lake. What the audience saw was a complete transformation—“a new Nureyev, an English Nureyev,” as Richard Buckle put it. (illustration credit 1.29)

  Rehearsing one of the rhapsodic duets from Marguerite and Armand, the 1963 ballet that Frederick Ashton created for the two stars, and in which Margot abandoned herself as never before to her young partner. (illustration credit 1.30)

  The final moments of Kenneth MacMillan’s 1965 Romeo and Juliet, the ballet that marked a turning point in their fellow dancers’ acceptance of the Fonteyn-Nureyev phenomenon. (illustration credit 1.31)

  Twin-halves in Roland Petit’s Paradise Lost, a 1967 Fonteyn-Nureyev vehicle that paid homage to the Pop-Art sixties, merging ballet with sex and high fashion. (illustration credit 1.32)

  Christopher Gable, left, with Rudolf in MacMillan’s 1964 Images of Love, a highly charged, homoerotic duet that also brought out the aspect of professional rivalry which existed between the two male stars. (illustration credit 1.33)

  In a 1963 gala performance of La Sylphide by August Bournonville, the Danish choreographer whose light, clean style was a challenging new technique for Rudolf and one he was determined to absorb on first arriving in the West. (illustration credit 1.34)

  The seduction scene in the film of Roland Petit’s Le Jeune Homme et la mort in which Rudolf’s costar is the vampish Zizi Jeanmaire. (illustration credit 1.35)

  Rudolf surrounded by his Claras from his Royal Ballet Nutcracker. From left: Merle Park, Lesley Collier, Jennifer Penney, and Antoinette Sibley. (illustration credit 1.36)

  Performing for the Dutch National Ballet with Benjamin Feliksdal, right, in Rudi van Dantzig’s Monument for a Dead Boy, 1968. This was Rudolf’s rite of passage into the alien world of modern dance. (illustration credit 1.37)

  A 1973 Royal Opera performance of Balanchine’s The Prodigal Son—not by any means a signature role but one in which Rudolf excelled. (illustration credit 1.38)

  A climactic fish dive from The Sleeping Beauty with National Ballet of Canada’s youngest principal, Karen Kain, one of Rudolf’s protégées and favorite partners. (illustration credit 1.39)

  The Royal Ballet’s Ann Jenner with Rudolf in Jerome Robbins’s Dances at a Gathering, the 1970 ballet in which Rudolf finally achieved his wish to be “part of the company; on a par with all of them.” (illustration credit 1.40)

  Jerome Robbins, back row, center, with the cast of Dances at a Gathering. Clockwise from left: Jonathan Kelly, Lynn Seymour, Michael Coleman, Robbins, David Wall, Monica Mason, Antoinette Sibley, Anthony Dowell, and Ann Jenner. Rudolf is in the center with Laura O’Connor on his right. (illustration credit 1.41)

>   Discussing Scriabin’s score with Frederick Ashton, left, for Poème Tragique, the explosive solo in which Rudolf made his London debut. (illustration credit 1.42)

  Watching Kenneth MacMillan demonstrate the kind of quirky, jazzy movements that defined the solo created to Bach’s Fantasia in C Minor for the Royal Academy of Dance in 1963. (illustration credit 1.43)

  Rudolf and Rudi van Dantzig, right, in Amsterdam, 1968. (illustration credit 1.44)

  A dress rehearsal moment, below, while performing Paul Taylor’s 1981 gala piece in New York, From Sea to Shining Sea; Rudolf flanked by Mikhail Baryshnikov and Taylor. (illustration credit 1.45)

  Rehearsing in a New York studio with Murray Louis, who sees Rudolf as the pioneer in the breaking of barriers between ballet and modern dance. (illustration credit 1.46)

  Rudolf photographed in Geneva with a camera-shy Clara Saint on tour with the de Cuevas Company in 1961. (illustration credit 1.47)

  Below left: Facing a blitzkrieg of flashbulbs at his post-defection press conference in Paris, June 1961. (illustration credit 1.48)

  Below right: Rudolf picking out a tune in London’s Baron’s Court studios during rehearsals for his debut solo, Poème Tragique, November 2, 1961. (illustration credit 1.49)

  Above: Rudolf being coached in 1965 by Erik Bruhn, the love of his life and his only lodestar. (illustration credit 1.50)

  Below: Rudolf and Erik taking a class at the American Ballet Theatre school, June 1965. (illustration credit 1.51)

  The sixties pop star, photographed by Richard Avedon in New York, May 1967. (illustration credit 1.52)

  A private lesson with Valentina Pereyaslavec, one of the teachers Rudolf most admired, in an American Ballet Theatre school studio, New York, May 5, 1963. (illustration credit 1.53)

  Posing on May 6, 1963, for Avedon, whom Rudolf regarded as a kindred spirit with the same passion for art in all its forms. (illustration credit 1.54)

  The famous legs that Rudolf dismissed as too short, New York, May 29, 1967. (illustration credit 1.55)

  Above: Rudolf working with Nigel Gosling on his autobiography in the drawing room of 27 Victoria Road. (illustration credit 1.56)

  Right: On the road during a tour of America in the late sixties. (illustration credit 1.57)

  In San Francisco with his Russian-Armenian adopted mother, Armen Bali. (illustration credit 1.58)

  Wallace Potts and Jeannette Etheredge at the end of an evening at Bali’s, her mother’s restaurant. (illustration credit 1.59)

  On the set of Valentino with Leslie Caron—two dancers “talking foot talk.” (illustration credit 1.60)

  Above, left to right: Monique van Vooren, Rudolf, and Maria Tallchief at the New York premiere of Valentino. (illustration credit 1.61)

  Below left: Rudolf and a radiant Douce François at a party in Paris. (illustration credit 1.62)

  Below right: On vacation with interior designer Tessa Kennedy, the close friend Rudolf tried to persuade to mother his child. “I’d had all these boys, so he thought he’d be sure of having a son with me.” (illustration credit 1.63)

  On board Stavros Niarchos’s yacht Atlantis 11 with their mutual friend Princess Firyal. (illustration credit 1.64)

  Below left: Island-hopping in Greece, Rudolf poses with his Parisian friend and lover Franck Raoul-Duval. (illustration credit 1.65)

  Below right: In Turkey with Maude and Nigel Gosling. Rudolf watches a local woman spinning wool as she walks—an idea he had in mind for his production of The Sleeping Beauty. (illustration credit 1.66)

  The 1986 sailing trip around the southwestern coast of Turkey with Wallace, far left, Douce, and Robert Tracy. (illustration credit 1.67)

  Clockwise from left: The 1987 Turkey group. Stephen Sherriff, Yasemin Pirinccioglu, Jane Hermann, Wallace, Douce, and Rudolf. (illustration credit 1.68)

  Rudolf being led offstage by Charles Jude in a 1980s performance of Béjart’s Songs of a Wayfarer, a work that became as resonant in his late career as Giselle had been in his youth. (illustration credit 1.69)

  Kenneth Greve, the young Danish dancer with whom Rudolf was in love during the late eighties. Richard Avedon photographed him for The New Yorker in London on December 3, 1997. (illustration credit 1.70)

  Charles Jude and Elisabeth Platel in a pas de deux from Rudolf’s Paris Opéra production of Swan Lake. (illustration credit 1.71)

  Rudolf rehearsing the Paris Opéra’s corps de ballet in his production of Don Quixote, 1981. (illustration credit 1.72)

  The dining room at quai Voltaire, with Rudolf’s kilim-covered Russian birchwood furniture and collection of academic nude paintings. (illustration credit 1.73)

  Preparing to conduct the Vienna Residenz Orchestra in September 1991—a concert organized by his young Italian friend Alexandra della Porta Rodiani, who took this photograph. (illustration credit 1.74)

  The last vacation, October 1992 : Rudolf on the terrace of his house on St. Bart’s with his young Rottweiler, Solaria. (illustration credit 1.75)

  Ezio Frigerio’s memorial marking Rudolf’s grave at the Russian cemetery in St. Geneviève-des-Bois. In homage to the Tatar nomad, it represents a traveling trunk covered with an astonishingly authentic, softly folding fringed kilim made from bronze and glass mosaics in the Bashkiri colors of turquoise and coral. (illustration credit 1.76)