Ninel Kurgapkina
I'LL TELL YOU ABOUT
MY FRIEND
Rudik and I danced together a lot, developing a fairly impressive
repertoire the three years he was at the Kirov. We performed at the Maryinsky
Theatre, frequently went on tours abroad and
had triumphs together. Now, recalling that time and attempting a serious analysis of it all, I could of course
simply list all the events in chronological order and draw up a critical
resume. But since the subject is Rudik, I have no particular desire to do
so. Our work together and our relationship
was never pre-planned. It was real life — multifaceted and unpredictable
— and, being life, it's impossible to place it in any preconceived
boundaries.
Our
first ballet together was "Gayane", which we performed during Rudik's
first season at the Kirov. Before that, he was first
given the role of Frondoso in "Laurentia" (where he danced with
Dudinskaya), which meant that the part of Armen
in "Gayane" was his second. When he was studying for the role, he was
nothing short of fanatical. He was
very quick on the uptake, so we were ready to go on after only about two weeks, no more. On top of everything,
"Gayane" is no easy
ballet. It has a very conventional stylistic form of dancing, but it also has
its own particular character and eurythmics. When all is said and done,
it's not a true classic. But that wasn't a
problem for Rudik. He danced it perfectly.
Strange as it may
seem, on finishing Ballet School he was already a fully-accomplished dancer. You never had to tell him where to put his hands
or feet, advise him on how to support
his partner or say to him, "Don't fall under me...". Of course, he knew how to throw a tantrum. But,
all in all, he was a born dancer, in the truest sense of the word. Indeed, he
must have been, for Dudinskaya would never
have asked him to dance " Laurentia" with her if she' d thought for a
minute that he would drop her.
As he progressed under Dudinskaya's tutelage, he picked up everything
very quickly, developing at an extraordinary speed. Maybe some ballerinas
complain nowadays that he didn't hold them properly on turns,
but all I can say is that our rotations were always a success. True, he would give
me a little help in the pirouettes —
which most ballerinas like to have. But I'd usually tell him all he had
to do was hold me up and I'll do the rest. "Just help me to hold on. Don't
mess," I would say to him. Rudik liked
both my independence of mind and the way
our heights flattered one another. He was
" Gayane" was a great success for us
and it was a pleasure to work with Rudik, in spite
of his "difficult" character. He wasn't popular at the
theater. In fact, the honest
truth was that unless you were actually dancing with him, there was little which
was lovable about him. At the Kirov, there's a tradition of respect, verging on servility, but Rudik totally lacked any reverence for it He preferred
to remain aloof from the others and showed it in a number of
blunt actions that shook the whole theater community to its core. One such instance
comes to mind when Rudik, having just finished Ballet School, came to take his
first class at the theater. He walked into the studio and stopped right by the
barre. It was customary for the youngest in
class to take a watering-can and wet the floor not only by the barre but
also in the middle of the room. Everyone was standing around waiting for Rudik to do so. But he simply stood there in front
of everyone, with a hand on his hip,
and stared. Someone said to him: "Go on, Rudik, you're the youngest. Water the floor." Rudik shook
his finger at all of us, picked up his gear
and left the room. Later on, I asked him why he wouldn't water the floor. "Why
should I have?" he replied. "Because it's a tradition," I said.
"The youngest always waters the
floor." "To begin with, I'm not so young," he said to me.
"And what's more, there's no shortage of talentless idiots in there who're
only fit to water the floor!" Rudik was, as you can see, badly lacking in
discipline.
Yet
when it came to the cultural side of things, Rudik absorbed information like a sponge. He had an excellent under- standing of music and,
widely-read or not, he was always bright and perceptive. He was interested in
absolutely everything under the sun. On the other hand, when he was
engaged in his work, no one could ever
guess what kind of mood he was in — whether he was in a good mood or in a bad one — because he was so
absorbed in what he was doing. In other words, he was a dancer in the
fullest sense of the word. And he also understood that to be a dancer you had
to have a partner.
"Gayane" marked the
start of our long friendship together. This role completely suited him right
down to the ground. Rudik looked extremely handsome and he had, I would say, a
rather "Gayanesque" character. Our pas de deux together was a wonderful success, even though I was very
demanding myself. (I, too, was far
from having an easy-going character.) Especially when it comes to lifts. Believe me, there are many
different types of lifts in this pas de deux and all of them are extremely difficult — such as the one
when he raises me up over him and
carries me across the length of the stage with only one of his hands supporting
me. Rudik executed it all brilliantly. And if, at rehearsals, I'd ask him to practice this lift with me a dozen
times, that's exactly what he would do. Even if it was twenty times, no
problem. You never heard Rudik complain: "Oh, must I? But I'm so tired!" Truly, there had never been
anyone like Rudik before. That's how
he differed from all those "geniuses" who came after him and who considered themselves to be dancers with a
capital "D"! What was a mere ballerina to them? So, I have to
say that I enjoyed dancing with Rudik, particularly
because he was so very musical. You see, when pirouettes or lifts are performed in synch with the music, it not only
looks good, it also makes their execution
much easier. On the other hand, when one of the two people performing is out of synch with the music, the inevitable
result is a lack of coordination and the
movement doesn't quite come off. Rudik's talent for feeling the music never let
him down.
Our second ballet together was "La Bayadere", where I danced
Gamzatti. I remember one particularly difficult duet, in which I had an entrance
which included a difficult renversè Usually,
whoever is playing Solor prefers to soar up above his partner at this
point, to show off the superiority of his jumping technique. But Rudik wasn't
like that at all. He believed that a duet was a duet and even though he might take off before his partner, he felt that the
two of you should land together. The
same went for the jetè en avants. He
would land exactly in time with the
music, and not because he was already an experienced dancer or possessed a profound technique, but simply because
his natural feeling for dance wouldn't let him do otherwise. Remember,
in those days, it was customary to dance in time with the music. We hadn't
reached the point where it became fashionable to linger in the air longer than
necessary, as if to say: "It's not my fault
the tempo is so fast! Come on, music, wait for me. I'm still flying!"
Because of this approach that Rudik and I shared, our duets were always a
beautiful event.
After
"La Bayadere", the next season saw us dancing "Don
Quixote", a ballet that took us a relatively long
time to prepare. (As far as Rudik was concerned, it seemed
to take a long time, although I don't believe it took us more than a month). And as always happens, "D.Q." began with a conflict during
rehearsals. In this particular instance) it involved a man at the
Kirov named Mikhail Mikhailovich Mikhailov, a guardian of
tradition who had an absolute horror when anyone made the
slightest attempt to change anything and who would go off the deep end at the
sight of any innovation. Rudik was to have many run-ins with Mikhailov, but this first one took place as we were just starting to work on " Don
Quixote". Rudik was rehearsing his first
variation and, right before his exit, he made a long pause before taking a series of soft, slow, drawn-out steps. Mikhailov almost
burst a blood-vessel.
"Stop!" he yelled. "What's going on? You can't do that! Do it again!" Not that anyone was arguing with
him. But once Rudik had made up his mind about something, there was no
changing it. He quietly repeated his exit, only
this time it was even slower. Mikhailov couldn't stand it. "I can't work
under these conditions. I'm
leaving!" And out he went, washing his hands of us. Out he went, but I stayed. I thought Rudik's innovation
to be perfectly permissible and I
saw no reason for making such a drama out of it. "Rudik," I
said." Do it quickly, just for
Mikhailov, and then you can perform it on stage the way you want to do
it." "Why should I?" he demanded. "Why should I fake it for
him if I'm going to do it my way on the stage?" Thankfully, at that
point, Alexander Ivanovich Pushkin
interceded and began rehearsing with Rudik his role in the ballet. In any case,
this wasn't to be his last incident with Mikhailov.
In "Don
Quixote", I didn't dance the simple variation that is usually performed
nowadays. I danced the one that incorporated the leaps which Dudinskaya did. The final diagonal took me to the
very front edge of the stage, which
was all too often littered with flowers after Rudik's solo variation. Just try
dancing on that! It's not only difficult, but extremely hazardous as well.
Nothing could've been easier than slipping on all these petals and
injuring yourself. "Rudik, please tell your fans not to throw any flowers
after your variation,"
I said.
"If they have to throw them, let it be after the coda and, if possible,
from the other side. Best of all would be if they waited
until the very end. Don't worry, I don't want your flowers. But I'm warning you: if
there are any more slippery petals scattered
about, I won't dance until you've cleared them all away." "How am I
supposed to know who's going to throw flowers?" he replied. "Find
out!" I snapped. Anyway, during
the next performance of "Don Quixote", the flowers once again came
flying down onto the stage. Just as I thought, I said to myself. But before I had a chance to do anything, I saw
Rudik out there scooping up the flowers.
He picked up every last petal and then disappeared with them into the wings. I should've realized then that there was no
way he could have controlled the
actions of his fans. Needless to say, it could have all ended very tragically.
Despite the fact that he had
been with the company for only three years, Rudik
had a great number of fans. (I often danced with him, and not only in the big productions. "Swan Lake" was one of
"our" ballets, but that was much later). Once, for example,
Sergeyev sent Rudik and me on a 40-day tour of East Germany, promising that it would be strictly our own tour with the two
of us dancing all the evening performances. But wouldn't you know it, when we
got there we found that we were part
of a travelling circus, with singing, dancing and other various
sideshows. And so, we travelled the length and breadth of East Germany in a bus — as part that farce. But
as luck would have it, it seemed that the
Germans already knew of us. I'd already been there before and it turned out Rudik
knew a lot of Germans from Ballet School. I can't quite recall how the invitation came about, but in Berlin we were
asked to perform our program for the
local ballet dancers there. Well, what can I say, Rudik and I danced our entire
repertoire for them: Pas de deuxs from "Giselle", "Don
Quixote", "Sleeping Beauty"
and finally a kind of Moshkovsky Waltz. I had often danced this waltz with
Bregvadze in Leningrad, but with Rudik I only danced it when we went abroad.
His technique during the lifts couldn't have been better and our Moshkovsky
Waltz turned out well. We had no time whatsoever to catch our breaths between numbers. We did one pas de deux
after another. But it all went so
well that, even now, many years later, I still meet people who saw us that
night and remember our unforgettable performance together. Throughout
all of the tour, Rudik carried himself with
great restraint. Which was a great help when you bear in mind the conditions we were forced to put up with and the vast distances
we had to cover... in a bus.
That same bus led to a really upsetting incident. The chief culprit in
the whole affair was a pair of trousers that I always wore when I was
travelling. At the time, Soviet women weren't supposed to wear trousers —
or rather, they could and did, only it was considered unbecoming. Any woman wearing
trousers would be refused entry into a
restaurant or any other public building. But in the West, no one gave a damn
about such a thing and East Germany was no different. When we arrived in Dresden, Rudik and I got off the
bus and went into an art gallery with
me wearing these trousers of mine — much to the fury of some Soviets who were
present. When I returned to Leningrad, I discovered that a certain do-gooder — I only found out later it was the
then-president of Goskontsert — had cooked up an almost unbelievable letter about me, claiming that I had
behaved abominably and had even gone
into a Dresden art gallery dressed "unspeakably indecent". I didn't know what to do, so I started
knocking on doors, went to the head of Goskontsert — who, of
course, didn't tell me that he was the one who had written the letter — all the while dragging Rudik along with
me, even right up to the Party Oblast Committee. But no matter what I
tried, it did no good. I was left out of the
next tour to Paris on account of that blasted letter. And, by the way, that
letter wasn't just written out of the blue. It had been officially requested by
a member of the Kirov management. I think this incident with the trousers might also have played an important role in
Rudik's fate as well, because when they
tried to force him to return to Russia after his defection, he understood all too
well that even if they didn't throw him into prison, there was a hundred percent chance the authorities would never let him
out of the country again. Such were
the far-reaching repercussions of that East German tour.
Of course there were many other trips. In fact, we travelled across the
entire Soviet Union together. Among other places, we once
went to the Pushkinsiye Gory for some type of Pushkin jubilee. (here : A.S. Pushkin
is the great Russian poet.) You see, it seemed that we were indispensable to the
Long before that time, Rudik and I made a memorable trip to Vienna for
the Festival of Young People and Students where Kirov
dancers took part in the ballet competition. There were a lot of us there —
Sizova, Kekisheva, Zabotkina, Kolpakova, Gentsler, the newlyweds Maksimova and
Vasilyev, myself and Rudik. It was a major event. Some of us had gone there to
take part in the competition while others
were simply there as guests. Rudik and I brought our "Laurentia",
although he also danced with Sizova a pas de deux from "Le Corsaire"
— for which they scored the highest number of points possible. (I didn't take part in the contest, since I went
there as part of the out-of-competition contingent. You see, the Kirov was giving a lot of concert performances
there also.) And how do you think we
got to Vienna? Ina very original manner: by bus!!! Can you imagine that? All the way from Moscow to
Vienna in a bus! I don't even remember
where it was we slept. Surely, it couldn't have been on the bus? In any case, we travelled with a member of the Komsomol,
since each bus had at least one of
these government agents on board. Ours would suddenly announce, "Let's sing a song!" and we would all have to sing
along. Or, it would be, "Let's all be very quiet!" and
everyone would be expected to fall silent. Everyone, that is, except for Rudik and me. We had what you call
"attitude". We'd do the complete opposite of what we were asked to do. When everyone else was singing, we
would remain quiet. And when
everyone else was quiet, we would sing out loud. At which point, this little Komsomol guy would berate us.
"Why aren't you singing!" "I don't know. I guess we just
don't feel like it." "But everyone's got to sing together!" And
so it would go. Always the same.
On and on we travelled, until
at last we drew into Budapest, which has a stunningly
beautiful opera house. We made a stop there — all of us, about forty or fifty buses. I think there must've been more
than a thousand of us: sportsmen, musicians,
dancers, not to mention the separate youth delegation. We were told to be back on the bus in half an hour. I stayed
in my seat and rested, but Rudik went off somewhere. Time goes by and
everyone starts to return. Except for Rudik.
At first, no one realized who exactly was missing. Then the Komsomol began
running up and down the buses. Only then did it become apparent that it was
Nureyev. So, we waited and waited. He eventually turned up half an hour later and, of course, everyone attacked him.
"Why are you so late? Where the hell were you? Half an hour, you were
told!" "How do I know when I'll be in Budapest again?" he
said. "I wanted to see the opera house!".
Finally, our troupe arrived in
Vienna. We were given large rooms to sleep in 
and
even had some free evenings to ourselves — which Rudik and I didn’t
let go to waste. On one of them, Rudik said to me,
"Let's run away and go dancing!" You see,
On another trip, we
spent New Year's in Egypt. There, by tradition, a belly-dancer is always
invited for festive occasions. She'd start off dancing, half-naked, by herself. Then, after awhile, she'd entice one of the men
present to dance with her. Our belly-
dancer began to sidle up to Rudik, trying to lure him out onto dance. One thing
led to another. The next thing you know Rudik was out there dancing with gusto, as if he'd been belly-dancing
in Egypt all his life. ,
We had a
lot of adventures together in Africa, which meant that we slept very little.
Every morning at eight o'clock the hotel would project Walt Disney cartoons for
the children present. (Parents used to bring their kids there for their
birthday and present them with little gifts.) Rudik and I would
go down every day not only to watch the cartoons but also to
watch those little Arab children play with their hula-hoops,
swinging four of them at once around their little bodies. Other times, Rudik
and I would wander off into the city. Once, we even got lost. That was when Cairo still had the infamous Halila Bazaar, a hodgepodge of slums and
thieves's dens. It was here that we lost our way, in the midst of
all the dregs of society. It was getting dark and neither of
us spoke a word of Arabic. To this day, I don't know how we managed to find
our way back.
One day, during our tour in Egypt, Rudik and I were driven out into the
desert where
Rudik and I climbed up Cheops's pyramid. Up and up we clambered, before I realized that I had left my camera on one
of the steps below. I turned to go
back down, but soon discovered that descending was a far more daunting task. I
returned to that pyramid years later and was immediately overcome with fright, due to my fear of heights. But Rudik was always
drawn to them. And he was both delighted
and proud that we had managed to make it to the top. While we were still in Cairo, one day we climbed up on the roof
of our hotel so that Rudik could take
a photograph of the city. I can't describe how terrified I was, but Rudik
didn't seem to know the meaning of
fear. Another time, either on an official outing or on one of our days off, we
were driven somewhere and ended up in a place that was completely deserted when
we arrived — a restaurant, I think it was. Rudik and I were wandering about the place and, out of
nowhere, we came upon a piano. Now,
I was a real music nut. I used to play the piano every day and often lent Rudik
my sheet music. So, I sat down at the keyboard and began to play a few things from memory — Beethoven's Seventh
Sonata, Chopin's Seventh Waltz — while Rudik sat nearby and
listened. Things were all going very well when I suddenly heard people
applauding. It turned out that the restaurant wasn't deserted after all. People were sitting in a dining area down below,
enjoying my little impromptu recital.
Sometimes,
totally unexpected things happened while Rudik and I were on tour.
For example, there was the time we arrived in Bulgaria by train at the crack of dawn. We were still sitting inside the train when we heard a great
commotion coming from the platform outside. A group of people
had gathered there and was chanting "Nu-re-yev! Nu-re-yev!" as they
passed crates full of peaches to us through the window.
It
was events like this that made me aware of Rudik's incredible popularity and fame. Because you wouldn't have been aware of it from looking at his
lifestyle. Of course, by the standards of the day, he was
comfortably well-off. He held the position of soloist at the
Kirov and the management had allotted him a room in a flat. He
once stormed up to me and said: "Have you heard? They're giving me a flat! With Sizova! They think that by doing so I'll eventually marry
her! Never!!!" To tell the truth, the
Rudik always gave himself over completely to the matter at hand. I
remember him once asking me, "Do you know I'm dancing Bluebird
today?" "Yes, I know." "Are you coming along to see
me?" "Of course, I am." The next*day, we ran into each other on one
of the staircases in the Ballet School. "Well, what did you think?"
"I've seen you dance better." "Oh, really?" "I felt
that you could have jumped higher." ."I don't agree." Several
days later, we met on that same staircase
and he said: "You know, I saw the film they made of my performance. And
I think I danced it very well!!!" In actual truth, the part of Bluebird
didn't really suit Rudik. Solor and Albrecht
maybe, but not Bluebird.
Another
thing I have to say about Rudik is that in both his aesthetics and in his
approach to dancing there was something slightly effeminate about him. He was the first man ever to dance on high half-points and extend his leg
high up in the air. Before he came on the scene, high arabesques and passes were
not popular. (I know that he had looked
through a lot of Western ballet magazines — where he got them from I don't know.) I once
asked him, "Why do you sometimes dance
so effeminately?" "Don't you realize?" he said to me. "I'm
still a boy!"
He wanted to dance "Swan Lake" and was given it, along with
"Sleeping Beauty", not long before the Paris tour. I
guess you could say the Kirov bought me off with that "Swan Lake".
Rudik and I rehearsed it together and then I was left out of the tour, thanks
to that damned trousers-in-the-Dresden-gallery incident. (Of course, the management knew all along that I wasn't going
to be taken on tour.) Nevertheless,
Rudik and I worked out most of the steps in about two weeks, then the hints started coming one
after another that we'd have to finish rehearsing
it sometime later. I hated to have to interrupt our work like this. Who knows what could happen? And as fate would have it, things
turned out even worse than expected...
I was
extremely upset when Rudik defected. I lost not only a wonderful partner, but
also a good friend, for our relationship was more than just that of two people
who danced well together. I liked him enormously, even if he could be extremely
unpleasant at times. But I could see that he had made the right choice. The
next time I was in Paris with the Kirov, the phone rang. It was Rudik.
"Can I take you out to dinner?" "We've just been told that we
can't go out on our own." "Then can I send you some flowers?"
"There's no need to do that." "Can I meet up with you after
dinner?" "I really don't think that's such a good idea." "I
get it. There's a lot you're not allowed to do."
When
the Kirov went on tour to Verona, Rudik came to one of our performances and
sent flowers to me through Carla Fracci. Only much later were we able to meet
under normal circumstances, when Rudik lived in Paris. I went over to his
apartment and we talked for hours.
Rudik's
death did not come as a surprise to me. He'd been ill for a long time and was
in particularly bad shape towards the end. I was at the funeral, where I was
suddenly asked to read some verses of Pushkin's from "Eugene Onegin".
We were all waiting for the coffin to be brought down the Grande Opera's
staircase when a man, accompanied by his. translator, came up to me and said,
"We'd be really grateful if you could read some verses from 'Eugene
Onegin' in Rudik's memory." I was totally flustered: "I've never read
in public before. I'd be hopeless." "That wouldn't matter."
"But I don't have my glasses with me." "Don't worry, we'll find
you some." So, I submitted and read out loud the verses. And you know
what, it didn't turn out half bad...
Tis time to loose me from my tether;
I call on freedom — naught avails:
I
pace the beach, await good weather,
And beckon to the passing sails.
When, wrapped in storm, shall I be battling
The billows, while the shrouds are ratti
Quit of the shore's dull element?
'Tis time to seek the southern surges
Beneath my Afric's sunny sky,
And, there at home, for Russia sigh,
Lamenting in new songs and dirges
The
land that knew my love, my pain,
Where long my buried heart has lain.
After
the memorial at Paris Opera, we drove out to the cemetery. The French Ministry
of Culture deserves much thanks for the first-class arrangements he made,
although there was one thing I think that Rudik would have strongly objected
to: he was buried in the same row as Lifar... someone he could never stand.
It is article from the book "
Three years at the
