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Rudolf Khametovich Nureyev (17 March 1938 – 6 January 1993) was a Soviet ballet dancer and choreographer. Nureyev is regarded by some as the greatest male ballet dancer of his generation.
Nureyev was born on a Trans-Siberian train near Irkutsk, Siberia, Soviet Union to a Bashkir-tatar family. He began his early career with the Mariinsky Ballet in St. Petersburg. He defected from the Soviet Union to the West in 1961, despite KGB efforts to stop him. This was the first defection of a Soviet artist during the Cold War, and it created an international sensation. He went on to dance with The Royal Ballet in London and from 1983 to 1989 served as director of the Paris Opera Ballet. In addition to his technical prowess, Rudolf Nureyev was an accomplished choreographer serving as the chief choreographer of the Paris Opera Ballet. He produced his own interpretations of numerous classical works, including Swan Lake, Giselle, and La Bayadère.
Education at Vaganova Academy
When his mother took Nureyev and his sisters into a performance of the ballet Song of the Cranes, he fell in love with dance. As a child he was encouraged to dance in Bashkir folk performances and his precocity was soon noticed by teachers who encouraged him to train in Saint Petersburg (called Leningrad from 1924 to 1991). On a tour stop in Moscow with a local ballet company, Nureyev auditioned for the Bolshoi ballet company and was accepted. However, he felt that the Mariinsky Ballet school was the best, so he left the local touring company and bought a ticket to St. Petersburg.
Owing to the disruption of Soviet cultural life caused by World War II, Nureyev was unable to enroll in a major ballet school until 1955, aged 17, when he was accepted by the Vaganova Academy of Russian Ballet of Saint Petersburg, the associate school of the Mariinsky Ballet. The ballet master Alexander Ivanovich Pushkin took an interest in him professionally and allowed Nureyev to live with him and his wife.
Principal with Kirov ballet
Upon his graduation in 1958, Nureyev joined the Kirov Ballet (now Mariinsky). He moved immediately beyond the corps level, and was given solo roles as a principal dancer from the outset. Rudolf Nureyev regularly partnered Dudinskaya, the company's senior ballerina and the wife of its director, Konstantin Sergeyev. Natalia Dudinskaya, 26 years his senior, chose him as her partner in the ballet Laurencia.
Before long Rudolf Nureyev became one of the Soviet Union's best-known dancers. From 1958 to 1961, in his three years with the Mariinsky, he danced 15 roles, usually opposite his partner, Ninel Kurgapkina, with whom he was very well paired, although she was almost a decade older than he was. Nureyev and Kurgapkina were invited to dance at a gathering at Khrushchev's dacha, and in 1959 they were allowed to travel outside the Soviet Union, dancing in Vienna at the International Youth Festival. Not long after, he was told by the Ministry of Culture that he would not be allowed to go abroad again. In one memorable incident, Nureyev interrupted a performance of Don Quixote for 40 minutes, insisting on dancing in tights and not in the customary trousers. He relented in the end, but his preferred dress code was adopted in later performances.
Defection at Paris airport
By the late 1950s, Rudolf Nureyev had become a sensation in the Soviet Union.
Yet, as the Mariinsky Ballet was preparing to go on a tour to Paris and London, Nureyev's rebellious character and a non-conformist attitude made him an unlikely candidate for a trip to the West, which was to be of crucial importance to the Soviet government's ambitions to portray what they felt was their "cultural supremacy". Furthermore, tensions between Rudolf Nureyev and the Mariinsky's artistic director Konstantin Sergeyev, husband and former dance partner of Natalia Dudinskaya, were growing. After a representative of the French tour organizers saw Nureyev dance in Leningrad in 1960, the French organizers urged Soviet authorities to let him dance in Paris, and he was allowed to go.
In Paris, his performances electrified audiences and critics. Oliver Merlin in Le Monde wrote,
I will never forget his arrival running across the back of the stage, and his catlike way of holding himself opposite the ramp. He wore a white sash over an ultramarine costume, had large wild eyes and hollow cheeks under a turban topped with a spray of feathers, bulging thighs, immaculate tights. This was already Nijinsky in Firebird.
Nureyev was seen to have broken the rules about mingling with foreigners and allegedly frequented gay bars in Paris, which alarmed the Mariinsky's management and the KGB agents observing him. The KGB wanted to send him back to the Soviet Union. On 16 June 1961, the Mariinsky group had gathered at Le Bourget Airport in Paris to fly to London. Sergeyev then took Nureyev aside and told him that he would have to return to Moscow, for a special performance in the Kremlin. Nureyev became suspicious and refused. Next he was told that his mother had fallen severely ill and he needed to come home immediately to see her. Nureyev refused again, believing that on return to the USSR he was likely to be imprisoned. With the help of French police and a Parisian socialite friend – Clara Saint, who had been engaged to the son of the French Minister of Culture Andre Malraux – Nureyev got away from his KGB minders and asked for asylum. Sergeyev and the KGB tried to discuss it with him but he chose to stay in Paris.
Within a week, he was signed up by the Grand Ballet du Marquis de Cuevas and was performing The Sleeping Beauty with Nina Vyroubova. On a tour of Denmark he met Erik Bruhn, soloist at the Royal Danish Ballet who became his lover, his closest friend and his protector until Bruhn's death in 1986.
Soviet authorities made Nureyev's father, mother and dance teacher Pushkin write letters to him, urging him to return, without effect. Although he petitioned the Soviet government for many years to be allowed to visit his mother, he was not allowed to do so until 1987, when his mother was dying and Mikhail Gorbachev consented to the visit. In 1989, he was invited to dance the role of James in La Sylphide with the Mariinsky Ballet at the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg. The visit gave him the opportunity to see many of the teachers and colleagues he had not seen since his defection.
Royal Ballet
Principal dancer
Dame Ninette de Valois offered him a contract to join The Royal Ballet as Principal Dancer. During his time at the company, however, many critics became enraged as Nureyev made substantial changes to the productions of Swan Lake and Giselle. Nureyev stayed with the Royal Ballet until 1970, when he was promoted to Principal Guest Artist, enabling him to concentrate on his increasing schedule of international guest appearances and tours. He continued to perform regularly with The Royal Ballet until committing his future to the Paris Opera Ballet in the 1980s.
Fonteyn and Nureyev
Nureyev's first appearance with Prima Ballerina Dame Margot Fonteyn was in a ballet matinée organized by The Royal Ballet: Giselle, 21 February 1962. The event was held in aid of the Royal Academy of Dance, a classical ballet teaching organisation of which she was President. He danced Poème Tragique, a solo choreographed by Frederick Ashton, and the Black Swan pas de deux from Swan Lake. They were so well received that Fonteyn and Nureyev proceeded to form a partnership which endured for many years. They premiered Romeo and Juliet for the company in 1965. Fans of the duo would tear up their programs to make confetti that'd be joyously thrown at the dancers. Nureyev and Fonteyn might do upwards of 20 curtain calls. On July 11, 1967, Fonteyn and Nureyev, after performing in San Francisco, were arrested on nearby roofs having fled during a police raid on a home in the Haight-Ashbury district. They were bailed out and charges of disturbing the peace and visiting a place where marijuana was used were dropped later that day for lack of sufficient evidence.
Other International Appearances
Among many appearances in North America, Nureyev developed a long-lasting connection with the National Ballet of Canada, appearing as a guest artist on many occasions. In 1972, he staged a spectacular new production of Sleeping Beauty for the company, with his own additional choreography augmenting that of Petipa. The production toured widely in the USA and Canada after its initial run in Toronto, one performance of which was televised live and subsequently issued in video. Among the National Ballet's ballerinas, Nureyev most frequently partnered Veronica Tennant and Karen Kain.
Director of the Paris Opera Ballet
In 1982, Nureyev became a naturalized citizen of Austria. In 1983, he was appointed director of the Paris Opera Ballet, where, as well as directing, he continued to dance and to promote younger dancers. He remained there as a dancer and chief choreographer until 1989. Among the dancers he groomed were Sylvie Guillem, Isabelle Guérin, Manuel Legris, Elisabeth Maurin, Élisabeth Platel, Charles Jude, and Monique Loudières.
His artistic directorship of the Paris Opera Ballet was a great success, lifting the company out of a dark period. His Sleeping Beauty remains in the repertoire and was revived and filmed with his protégé Manuel Legris in the lead.
Despite advancing illness towards the end of his tenure, he worked tirelessly, staging new versions of old standbys and commissioning some of the most ground-breaking choreographic works of his time. His own Romeo and Juliet was a popular success. When he was sick towards the end of his life, he worked on a final production of La Bayadère which closely follows the Mariinsky Ballet version he danced as a young man.
Final years
When AIDS appeared in France's news around 1982, Nureyev took little notice. The dancer tested positive for HIV in 1984, but for several years he simply denied that anything was wrong with his health. However, by the late 1980s his diminished capabilities disappointed his admirers who had fond memories of his outstanding prowess and skill. Nureyev began a marked decline only in the summer of 1991 and entered the final phase of the disease in the spring of 1992.
In March 1992, living with advanced AIDS, he visited Kazan and appeared as a conductor in front of the audience at Musa Cälil Tatar Academic Opera and Ballet Theater, which now presents the Rudolf Nureyev Festival in Tatarstan. Returning to Paris, with a high fever, he was admitted to the hospital Notre Dame du Perpétuel Secours in Levallois-Perret, a suburb northwest of Paris, and was operated on for pericarditis, an inflammation of the membranous sac around the heart. At that time, what inspired him to fight his illness was the hope that he could fulfill an invitation to conduct Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet at an American Ballet Theatre benefit on 6 May 1992 at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York. He did so and was elated at the reception.
In July 1992, Nureyev showed renewed signs of pericarditis but determined to forswear further treatment. His last public appearance was on 8 October 1992, at the premiere at Palais Garnier of a new production of La Bayadère that he choreographed after Marius Petipa for the Paris Opera Ballet. Nureyev had managed to obtain a photocopy of the original score by Minkus when in Russia in 1989. The ballet was a personal triumph although the gravity of his condition was evident. The French Culture Minister, Jack Lang, presented him that evening on stage with France's highest cultural award, the Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.
Death and funeral
Nureyev re-entered the hospital Notre Dame du Perpétuel Secours in Levallois-Perret on 20 November 1992 and remained there until his death from AIDS complications at age 54 on 6 January 1993. His funeral was held in the marble foyer of the Paris Garnier Opera House. Many paid tributes to his brilliance as a dancer. One such tribute came from Oleg Vinogradov of the Mariinsky Ballet in Saint Petersburg, Russia, stating: "What Nureyev did in the west, he could never have done here."
Nureyev's grave, at a Russian cemetery in Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois near Paris, features a tomb draped in a mosaic of an oriental carpet. Nureyev was an avid collector of beautiful carpets and antique textiles. As his coffin was lowered into the ground, music from the last act of Giselle was played and his ballet shoes were cast into the grave along with white lilies.
Tributes
After so many years of having been denied a place in the Mariinsky Ballet history, Nureyev's reputation was restored. His name was reentered in the history of the Mariinsky and some of his personal effects were placed on display at the theatre museum in St. Petersburg. At the famed Vaganova Academy a rehearsal room was named in his honour. As of October 2013, the Centre National du Costume de Scene has a permanent collection of Nureyev's costumes "that offers visitors a sense of his exuberant, vagabond personality and passion for all that was rare and beautiful." In 2015, he was inducted into the Legacy Walk.
At the Paris Opera there is a tradition to organize a dance night as homage to Rudolf Nureyev every ten years after he died in 1993. The homage to Nureyev was scheduled on 20 March 2003 and on 6 March 2013 respectively because he was born in March. Peers of Rudolf Nureyev who speak about and remember him, like Mikhail Baryshnikov, are often deeply touched.