Nureyev; an autobiography with pictures

By Rudolf Nureyev

Ruolf Nureyev (born Rudolf Khametovich Nureyev) was a Soviet-born ballet dancer and choreographer. Nureyev is regarded by many as the greatest male ballet dancer of his generation.

Written shortly after his defection to the West at the height of the cold war, this autobiography is a personal and poignant remembrance of his life

• Language: English
• Publisher: Chosho Publishing
• Release date: Feb 14, 2022
• ISBN: 9798985697933

Book preview

Introduction

TO write an autobiography at the age of twenty-four suggests unusual literary precocity or a high degree of egocentric exhibitionism. Rudolph Nureyev can be acquitted of the first charge without much ado: though remarkably quick and observant and endowed with a gift for the pungent phrase, he has probably never written so much as a postcard without protest. He is used to expressing himself directly—through his own limbs—and, like most dancers, he finds the written word a poor pedestrian substitute.

As for the second, he certainly has as much egocentricity as befits any young man, and perhaps a bit more (as befits any young dancer). But he is also exceptionally reticent. Few people part less willingly with the details of private life. How then was the story born?

The answer is very simple if we remember the circumstances of his flight to the West. As the reader will discover, this was no carefully planned operation but—typically—an impulsive emotional decision. As a result he found himself one June morning in a room in Paris with hardly a friend, no job, no prospects for the future, and fifty francs in his pocket.

With admirable promptitude the director of the Ballets de Marquis de Cuevas offered to put him under contract. He was not very happy with the conditions, but he accepted. It was borne in on him that in the West there was no real freedom without some economic security. A solution presented itself when a famous literary agency made him an offer for his story. He was, again, reluctant. But he was persuaded that this would give him the chance to refute rumors which had been put into circulation suggesting that the only reason for his defection was that he had been dazzled by the less creditable attractions of the West, the bright lights, easy morals, and soft living of capitalist high society. He agreed.

It might be thought that the rest would be easy. Many a story of this nature has been written by a capable journalist after a bit of research and the briefest conversation with the author, who then adds his signature. Perhaps fortunately, no amount of research would yield any material in this case. Nureyev himself was the only source. The agency had to tell its writers to dog him as he toured around Europe. In snatches of conversation in dressing rooms, hotel rooms, and cafés, day by day and piece by piece, the extraordinary story was slowly extracted. 

The talk was, at first, in Russian. This was translated into English, a language of which he had at that time a very small knowledge. To recover the nuances of the original spoken word is not easy. Nureyev himself insisted on many cuts and changes. He went over each page with critical attention and a surprising regard for style. He remains highly dissatisfied with the result. The headline-hungry journalist can sometimes be glimpsed peeping between the lines, and the translation has resulted in something which he calls a too sweet. But it is unlikely that he would ever be quite satisfied. If he finds fault with his own dancing (which he mostly does) it is not likely that he would be happy with his own prose.

The dissatisfaction arises, though, from something much more basic in his nature. The way in which he slips like a fish through the net of ordinary convention, the evasive wariness of his attitude—poised like a wild animal ready to vanish at the first suspicious move—these are the outward signs of a character familiar to anybody who has studied writers, painters, musicians, artists of all kinds in all ages—the character of a man whose private world is out of step with the world outside. It need not be, and in his case it certainly is not, a mere negative non-acceptance. His proud, stubborn independence is based on an instinctive drive to express some vision inside himself which he believes to be true and right and worth defending at all costs. He is one of nature’s protestants, a Luther of the ballet.

He himself regards this story as supremely unimportant. The incident which rocketed him into the news, and all that led up to it, he views as irrelevant to the only thing which matters to him—his dancing. Few people realize how completely the long working hours of a dancer (often from 10 a.m. to midnight), day after day and month after month, isolate him from the ordinary world. ln the end reality for him lies in theaters and rehearsal halls, classrooms and dressing rooms wherever they may be; dancers and the satellite characters who revolve around the ballet are the only solid people. All else is vague and shadowy—unimportant.

Nureyev has this sense, I believe, to an exceptional degree. Filled as he is by an extraordinary personal drive to express himself through dancing, he has a supreme, an unthinking disregard for all the values the rewards and punishments, temptations and loyalties—of the world outside it. Readers will not find in these pages the usual—one might say the natural—accounts of the reactions of audience and critics. Reference to them was brushed aside. Success to Nureyev means that he has come reasonably near to achieving what he was aiming at: the opinion of others, whether from friends or critics, whether laudatory or disapproving, is something he hardly hears.

It is perhaps this remarkable single-minded detachment which—lifting him effortlessly beyond the reach of the usual blandishments—has made him the target for so much curiosity. It is a curiosity which both irritates and puzzles him. How can anybody be interested in anything except his dancing?

He is right, of course: it is his dancing which counts. But we should not be human if we did not want to know how this strange phenomenon came to be what he is. It is a tale which intrigues us from several angles. It describes the struggle of a sensitive, tenacious boy against his environment; it unfolds a dramatic and romantic success story; it reveals unexplored scenes of Russian life; and, above all, it traces the development of a very exceptional artist.

Alexander Bland

Contents

Introduction

1 The Bid for Freedom

2 Childhood Impressions

3 The Dawning of an Obsession

4 Provincial Débuts

5 In Sight of the Temple

6 The Craving for Personal Expression

7 Success and the Professional Dilemma

8 The Pressure Mounts

9 The Parisian Situation

10 Coming to Terms with the West

11 New Horizons

12 Visit to America and London Reflections

Conclusion

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The photographs are copyright by Richard Avedon, Mike Davis, Opera Mundi, Michael Peto, Anthony Crickmay, Fred Fehl, G. B. L. Wilson, Serge Lido, Houston Rogers, and Zoë Dominic. The title page and frontispiece photographs are by Richard Avedon.

NUREYEV

1 The Bid for Freedom

Now and then in life one has to take a decision like lightning, almost quicker than one can think. I have known this in dancing when something on the stage goes  wrong. That is how it felt that hot morning in June on Le Bourget airfield, in Paris, as I stood in the shadow of the great Tupolev aircraft which was to fly me back to Moscow.

Its huge wing loomed over me like the hand of the evil magician in Swan Lake. Should I surrender and make the best of it? Or should I, like the heroine of the ballet, defy the command and make a dangerous—possibly fatal—bid for freedom?

During my stay in Paris I had felt the threat mounting. I was like a bird inside a net being drawn tighter and tighter. I knew this was a crisis.

For a bird must fly. I see nothing political in the necessity for a young artist to see the world: to compare, assimilate, to enrich his art with new experiences, both for his own profit and that of his country. A bird must fly, see the neighbor’s garden and what lies beyond the hills, and then come home, enrich his people’s lives with tales of how others live and the broadened scope of his art. But because I had tried to do this, I was to be dispatched to Moscow and there judged. For my irresponsible way of life, as they had called it. For insubordination, non-assimilation, dangerous individualism—how often I had already heard that refrain. How many times during my school years in Leningrad, and later during my dancer’s years at the Kirov, had it been said to me: Nureyev, your presence defiles the atmosphere here . . . you are a black spot on the clean body of our company. . . .

Only a couple of days before, Constantin Sergeyev, first dancer of the Kirov and actual ruler of the company for the last thirty years, had urged me not to mix so freely with my French friends or even to walk around and see things for myself. He had reminded me that it was not the individual who enriched the group but rather the Kollectiv which gave strength and existence to the individual. To stray from the herd was the surest way of getting nowhere. . . .

My luck was in on that day. What day was it? It’s very strange, but while I can remember the exact date I entered the Leningrad Ballet School, and while, without a second’s hesitation, I can name the hour I first appeared on the Kirov stage, I always have to check which day it was that my life took such a violent new turn at Le Bourget airport. Actually, it was the 17th of June. I’m very superstitious; I wish I had checked on my horoscope that day.

On that morning I had come back after a sleepless night to the Paris hotel where our entire company was staying. I had just time to pack and it must have been about seven o’clock. Our hotel was in the Place de la République and the square was slowly waking up. Cafés were opening up; waiters in clean white jackets were dusting the small round marble tables and already pulling down the bright striped canopies to keep the terraces cool. A green truck was making its round, splashing the square with jets of cold water.

It was the start of a beautiful transparent Parisian summer day. I loved it all, yet the idea of leaving it didn’t make me unhappy. After just over a month of performances in Paris we were to dance for a fortnight in London before returning home and the idea of dancing in London for the first time pleased me immensely. In my personal hierarchy of capitals, I’ve always placed London very high—higher, as a matter of fact, than Paris. Friends in Leningrad who had danced in London had all told me it was a city of great ballet lovers and I know of no greater joy than to dance before a public of real connoisseurs.

When I reached the Hotel Moderne the familiar blue bus was already parked in front of it. On that bus the entire Kirov company (with the exception of myself, most of the time) had "traveled all over Paris, ever since our arrival in the middle of May. On that bus they had discovered Paris, traveled to work or to dine. Not that the l20 dancers who made up our company were told to do this. They simply did so out of habit, the habit of our country today to do everything together—a compulsion which will take generations to break down.

I had no time for breakfast. I rushed upstairs to pack and one hour later the Kirov Ballet Company,