INTRODUCTION BY THE PEOPLE WHO
CONTRIBUTED TO THIS BOOK
In the
pages to come is a collection of reminiscences of a great dancer and outstanding choreographer: Rudolf Nureyev, a man sentenced by fate to
live out the most incredible of destinies, a man whose name until only recently
was condemned to complete oblivion in the
country in which he was born, the USSR. This is the first publication to focus on the "Russian" period
of Nureyev's stage career —
making it unique among all the other books which have been written about
him throughout the world.
It is
our hope that this book will be more than just the inevitable memoirs which always appear on the death of a great individual. Those books always
seem like a second burial, quietly erasing from memory the
true image of someone who once lived, loved and lost. The
subject is inevitably canonized and ends up not unlike an exhibit in a museum:
perfect in every way, but completely detached from reality. To
a large extent, Nureyev had already been canonized in life. For a start, he was
the world's most famous dancer, a man who spent a quarter of a century on stage
performing an average of some three hundred ballets a
year. He took the best of Russian ballet with him to the West and in the
process became known to people far outside the realm of' dance. The
leading choreographers of his day — Frederick Ashton and Jerome Robbins,
Martha Graham and Twyla Tharp, Roland Petit
and Maurice Bejart — created ballets exclusively for him. And Nureyev himself created his own
versions of "Cinderella" and "Romeo and Juliet", as well as updating numerous classical ballets. In his
lifetime, Nureyev became a living
monument to himself; ironically, this only happened in the West. In
Russia, an entirely different thing happened. With the exception of ballet
enthusiasts in Petersburg, Moscow and his native Ufa, it's doubtful whether anyone else ever heard of him. And it continued
to be that way right up until his death.
Although there was press coverage when he returned to Leningrad in 1989 to dance on the Kirov stage one last time in
Lovenskjold's "La Sylphide", Nureyev was at this point seriously ill. So the new generation of balletomanes
— who had come to see a living
legend — unfortunately witnessed all but a shadow of his former greatness. It was a far cry from the
dancer we had known in the late 1950's and early 1960's.
We were
luckier. We saw Nureyev on stage when he was still a student at the Leningrad Ballet School. (A. Ya.
There
seems to be a popular belief that Nureyev only became a great dancer in the West. This view
is widespread both in Western journalism and, after Nureyev's death, in our own
press. "We know from first-hand knowledge that this is
untrue and hope that with our collection of reminiscences we can set the record
straight. To begin with, when Nureyev requested
political asylum in France in 1961, he was already a
well-established dancer and a star of the Kirov Ballet. By then, he had danced every major ballet role and already had an army of
fans and followers. Most important of all, he possessed even at
this stage in his career an immaculate ballet technique and inimitable
"St. Petersburg" stage presence that was to
bring him fame and recognition as one of the greatest dancers — if not
the greatest
dancer — in the world.
It was due to his Russian
ballet training that Nureyev was able to so quickly assimilate in the West all the technically demanding parts he took on
and at the same time remain in such
great physical shape, in spite of his punishing workload and hectic life-style. And it was his knowledge
of Russian ballet traditions that brought him such success in every area of
dance he pursued. Last but not least was his talent, which had always
been evident even in his early years at the Leningrad
Ballet School. He was a star from the moment he first appeared on the Kirov stage, catching the public's imagination by
the sheer extent of his talent. Proof of this talent is found in the enormous
number of ballet reviews written about him at the time.
Nowadays, there's nothing
unusual for such a large amount of articles to be written about an artist; but,
in those days, performers weren't given so much attention by the press. Nevertheless, Rudolf was lionised in such
publications as "Teatralnaya Zhizn" (Theatre Life),
"Neva", "Smena" (Young Guard) and even "Izvestiya" (News), while the prominent ballet critics V.
Krasovskaya and V. Chistyakova
devoted entire articles to him. Long, contentious pieces appeared in magazines everywhere; he was both lauded and
censured-. In short, Nureyev was at the center of Leningrad's theatrical
life. And, strange as it now seems, journalists
referred to him as a "master of dance" without making any reference to his early years or to the fact that he had
only begun studying ballet very late in life. When all is said and done,
one has no choice but to acknowledge that Nureyev
was a remarkable phenomenon in the history of our culture, a widely acclaimed artist who carved out a name for
himself not only in Leningrad but also throughout all of Russia.
Loved he
definitely was, but only up until June 16,1961, the
day he defected to the West. This attitude was, however, only to be expected in the
political climate during that period. If you
were so blind you couldn't see how lucky you were to live and work in the
country of "victorious- socialism", then you had no right to be-considered a Soviet citizen, much
less an artist of the USSR. So Nureyev was put on trial and sentenced in
absentia to seven years' imprisonment
— a sentence, by the way, which to this day still stands. But the worst
was yet to come. First there appeared a number of defamatory articles in
various publications, such as the one in
"Kommunist". Then sadly, not even Serge Lifar (who was the artistic director of Paris Opera at
the time) could resist pressures from
the Kremlin to denounce Nureyev. Not long after that, Nureyev's name was condemned
by the State to be forgotten forever.
His name was removed from the
list of honor graduates at the Leningrad Ballet
School, as well as from all ballet periodicals published in the USSR. A book about the Kirov which contained an article on
Nureyev was even withdrawn from circulation
and all future copies were printed without any mention of him. If a ballet magazines sent from abroad contained
Nureyev's photograph, they would arrive on your doorstep with his image
pasted over. And so, thanks to the painstaking
efforts of the authorities, Nureyev was completely forgotten in Russia.
Believe it or not, his name — which had been misspelled in the "Kommunist" article — proved to be so
unfamiliar to the public that when it became possible several years ago to once again utter it, there was hardly one
publication )r television program that managed to spell the name
correctly. In place of Nureyev, all we read was "Nuriyev".
[n the West, Nureyev will always be remembered as a genius of
dance. Yet, in his native land, he was forgotten. Even when Russians at long last once
again discovered him, there were no fresh
attempts to review his talent or discern his genius. The result was that instead of having the Rudik that we knew
— brilliant, complex,
contradictory, indefatigable— all the Russian public had was a lifeless foreign
idol with a misspelled surname.
Alas,
Rudik is no longer with us. To coincide with the anniversary of his death, i number of
television programs and newspaper articles are currently being prepared in which the producers are relying
largely on Western sources for their material.
But we've tried to do things differently here. We didn't want to create m epitaph for Rudik's grave. Our aim is to bring
him back to life — if only for a brief time — so that he could once
more be the Rudik that we knew. [n
the following pages, we '11 describe events we were a part of in Leningrad
during the years 1955 to 1961
— many of which appear in print for the first time. We have, however, made
one self-imposed stipulation: since there exist
several versions of the events surrounding his defection and his reasons for
requesting political asylum, we prefer to leave the last word on this matter to
Nureyev himself. In this regard,
we've decided to include in this book an excerpt from his 1962 autobiography about that incident — an
incident which changed our lives almost
as much as his own. The subsequent chapters consist of reminiscences not only by those who studied and worked
with him, but also by his friends and fans, [n the latter pages, we've reprinted several Soviet newspaper articles
and ballet reviews which appeared before his defection, along with the
defamatory article in
‘’Kommunist’’ and Serge Lifar's shameful piece in
"Izvestiya" which appeared after his defection.
The
people who compiled this book wish to express their heartfelt gratitude to F.I. Rokkhind for helping to put this compilation together and for
allowing us to use so many photographs from her personal
collection. We would also like to thank A..I.
Bor, T.I. Zakrzhevskaya, V. Korolkov, Yu. L. Ryvkina, L.P. Myasnikova and the
Romankov family for permitting us to reprint photographs from their
collections. And we would also like to thank Joan Acocella for allowing us to reprint
her 1993 VOGUE interview with Mikhail
Baryshnikov and Maude Gosling for allowing
us to reprint a chapter from "NUREYEV: An Autobiography with Pictures". We're eternally grateful to N.B.
Filippova for heroically word-processing all of the original manuscripts. And
for this English-language edition, we would like to thank Wallace Potts
for reviewing the English translation. And
so before you is the fruit of our labors: a tribute to our dear friend. Our hope is that he will never again
be forgotten and that through these pages he will live once more and smile radiantly
upon you.
It is article from the book " Three years
at the