Rudolph Nureyev Overview

Although too erratic in technique to earn the distinction of virtuoso, Rudolf Nureyev still took a place among the most brilliant dancers in history. His flamboyance and charisma garnered him a truly massive audience; it's possible that his dancing has been... [more]

Although too erratic in technique to earn the distinction of virtuoso, Rudolf Nureyev still took a place among the most brilliant dancers in history. His flamboyance and charisma garnered him a truly massive audience; it's possible that his dancing has been seen by more people than that of any other dancer in history. In 1961 he catalyzed the dominance of Russian stars on the international ballet scene when he became the first artist to defect from behind the Communist Curtain. Though he never permanently allied himself with a single ballet company after leaving the Kirov, he guest-starred with England's Royal Ballet during the mid '60s and early '70s. The brash, animally attractive, and irrepressibly dramatic dancer transformed staid interpretations of male roles in such cornerstone ballets as "Swan Lake" and "Giselle" (in the process reviving the twilight-hour career of Margot Fonteyn, his most frequent partner). During the 1970s, Nureyev appeared in several movies and toured the U.S. in a revival of the Broadway musical "The King and I." He also indelibly impacted the next wave of ballerinas by convincing the Royal Ballet to cast against type. While director of the Paris Opera Ballet in the '80s, he continued to promote fresh, technically flashy young dancers such as Sylvie Guillem. Despite being ill with AIDS during his entire tenure with the Paris Opera Company, he worked tirelessly, staging new versions of old standbys and commissioning some of the most groundbreaking choreographers of his time. But it is Nureyev's own regal, impetuous dancing that is his true legacy: his Siegfried, who threw his arms about in wild lust after the Swan Queen; his Romeo, who clutched Juliet so passionately you feared his fingernails might draw blood. These spellbinding performances have become the inimitable standard of our age. At his last public appearance in 1992, at a production of "The Bayad're" at the Palais Garnier, the ailing but triumphant Nureyev (who required help getting onto the stage) received a 10-minute standing ovation from the audience. [show less]