Out Spotlight CVXI

All over the world part of holiday traditions for many is to go to ballet, and for most it will be The Nutcracker, So for today's Out Spotlight we focus on was regarded by most critics as the greatest male dancer of the 20th century, possibly the greatest ever. Dancer, choreographer, and ballet director Rudolf Nureyev.

Rudolf Hametovich Nureyev was born in a train near Irkutsk, while his mother was travelling across Siberia to Vladivostok, where his father, a Red Army political commissar of Tatar descent, was stationed on March 17, 1938. The son of Muslim peasants, he was a small, malnourished, and highly sensitive child, bullied and tormented by other children.

His proficiency at folk-dancing brought him to the attention of two exiled ballerinas living in Ufa. They gave him classes and introduced him to the opera ballet company there. After his father returned from serving in World War II, he regularly beat his son for studying dance. The child dreamed "of a savior who would come, take me by the hand and rescue me from that mediocre life." However, he was rescued not by some prince, but by his own protean talent supported by unyielding will power.

The impossible dream of studying ballet at the fabled Kirov school in Leningrad came true. At 17, he enrolled in the Leningrad Ballet School, where he was an outstanding dancer but a rebellious student. He refused to join the Communist youth league, and he studied English privately. After graduation in 1958 he became a soloist with the Kirov Ballet. Within two years Nureyev was one of Russia's best-known dancers, in a country which revered the ballet and made national heroes of its stars.

Three years later, while on tour with the Kirov Ballet in Paris, he learned that he was to be sent back to the USSR for flouting Soviet security regulations. As a consequence, he sought political asylum in France, making what came to be known as the great "leap to freedom."

He was subsequently convicted of treason in absentia by a secret Soviet trial. He lived most of the rest of his life at risk of being kidnapped or assassinated.

Nureyev's defection made headlines throughout the world. Overnight, he became a superstar. His physical beauty and sexual magnetism, coupled with his athletic ability, excited men and women alike. His seductive personality made him the darling of international society.

Moreover, his dancing, especially his stupendous jumps with multiple turns in the air, and his great risk-taking, changed the way male ballet dancers danced. His fame and charisma attracted new audiences to the ballet.

Nureyev made his American debut in 1962, appearing to great acclaim on television and with Ruth Page's Chicago Opera Ballet. Later in 1962 he joined London's Royal Ballet as permanent guest artist. In so doing, he revitalized the company. Partnered with Margot Fonteyn, he gave new life to such classics as Giselle and Swan Lake and introduced such contemporary ballets as Sir Frederick Ashton's Marguerite and Armand.

As artistic director, he formed his own touring companies and transformed the national ballet companies of Australia and Canada from provincial to world class.

In 1983,he became artistic director of the Paris Opera Ballet. He remained in this position until 1989, when he resigned. However, he served as premier choreographer of the Paris Opera Ballet until his death. Among his most successful works of choreography are his stagings of Romeo and Juliet, Manfred, and The Nutcracker.

An indefatigable performer, Nureyev for many years danced almost every day, sometimes with performances back-to-back. He appeared in cities throughout the world and attracted a large and diverse audience. As a result, he amassed a fortune, which he invested shrewdly, but also spent lavishly on houses and works of art.

One of Nureyev's great contributions to ballet had to do with his sexual openness. Completely comfortable with his own sexuality, Nureyev expended no effort in presenting a heterosexual image on stage or off. Hence, he was able to concentrate on expressing music and choreography as it seemed appropriate to him. His openness helped liberate other male dancers from the obsession with maintaining a heterosexual image.

His sex life was as legendary--and frenetic--as his dancing. His sexual partners ranged from hustlers to the rich and famous. Nureyev was both aloof and charming. The Gay and straight preoccupation of gossip was: "Is he Gay and\or how big is his 'accouterment'?" Nureyev hid nothing about either and the later was also confirmed by photographs taken by Richard Avedon.

Nureyev's most intense affair was with the Danish dancer Erik Bruhn. Bruhn possessed an elegant, refined, classical style, quite different from Nureyev's feral qualities. In 1961 Nureyev felt that Bruhn was the only living dancer who had anything to teach him. He sought out the older dancer and fell in love with him. Although the dour Bruhn responded physically to him, the intense and turbulent relationship that ensued was not a happy one, perhaps because Bruhn suffered from professional jealousy and anxiety. As Nureyev's star rose, Bruhn became reclusive and alcoholic. The dancers' physical relationship ended in the mid-1960s, but Nureyev never ceased loving Bruhn.

Nureyev also had a long-term relationship with director and archivist Wallace Potts in the 1970s. In 1978, Nureyev was briefly infatuated with a young dancer, Robert Tracy. Tracy moved into Nureyev's New York apartment, where he stayed until evicted thirteen years later, after Nureyev death, and treated, as he said, "like a lackey."

When AIDS appeared in France around 1982, Nureyev took little notice. Nureyev and Tracy were both diagnosed with the AIDS virus in 1983. For several years he simply denied that anything was wrong with his health. When, about 1990, he became undeniably ill, he is said to have attributed the symptoms to other ailments. He tried several experimental treatments but they did not stop his deteriorating health. His true diagosis was kept secret until the morning after his death.

In March 1992 secretly living with advanced AIDS, he returned to where he grew up in Kazan and appeared as a conductor in front of the audience at Musa Cälil Tatar Academic Opera and Ballet Theater in Kazan. This was his only appearance on the stage of the Musa Cälil Tatar Academic Opera and Ballet Theater, which now annually organizes the Rudolf Nureyev Festival in Tatarstan.

At his last stage appearance was a 1992 production of La Bayadère at the Palais Garnier, Nureyev received a standing ovation. The French Culture Minister, presented him with France's highest cultural award, the Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. He died in Paris a few months later, aged 54.

His grave, at a Russian cemetery in Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois near Paris, features a tomb draped in a mosaic of an oriental carpet, celebrating his love of collecting them.





Now for some snow. Taken this morning.