The
bid for freedom
Rudolf Nureyev
Now and
then in life 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 1961 on Le Bourget airfield, outside Paris,
as I stood in the shadow of the great Tupolev aircraft which 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 heroin of the ballet, defy the command and make a
dangerous — 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 would: 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 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 black spot on the
clean body of our
Company…» Only a couple of days before, C. Sergeyev, first dancer
of the Kirov and actual ruler of the Company for the last 30 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 «Kollective» which give 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 live took such a violent new turn at Le Bourget airport. Actually,
in 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 mast have been
about 7 o`clock. Our hotel was in the Place de la Republique and the square was slowly waking up.
Cafes 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 in all, yet the
idea of leafing 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 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 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,
traveled to work or to dine. Not that the 120 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, in its faithful bus, was on its way to the airport.
As I said,
I wasn`t unhappy to leave but I
wanted to savor every last moment. At such times all the things you have loved
in a town swim back into focus: I remembered with affection the Parc de Saint-Cloud
which I had liked much more than formal Versailles; the Louvre where I had
spent almost all of my free time between classes, rehearsals and performances;
the students` part of town: Saint-Michel and Saint-Germain des Pres where I had
dined soften with my French friend; the streets at night and the dark river
belong to you; the red and gold Paris Opera
— so different in moon from the blue and silver Kirov, yet just as beautiful
… I was thinking back on all the people I had met, their different outlooks on
life — the special atmosphere they created around them which had given me
such pleasure to share … I was deep in my recollections of all these
things when something strange happened on the bus.
I should
explain that we never did anything by ourselves. At home, many of us still
share a room with other people and so our lives are shaped into a consistent
pattern of collective thinking, collective eating, collective travel: we simply
never take individual action, never go anywhere alone, and collective tickets
are issued for every undertaking. For workers, artists, scientists or
whatsoever, there is always a man in charge who handles everything and stands
between us and the world.
So why our
manager, V. Bogdanov, suddenly distributing individual airplane tickets for
London? And why was the first one allotted to me? For the moment I failed to
gasp its significance and paid no special attention to it. We arrived Le
Bourget, passed through the Customs and were preparing to move out to the plane
when suddenly Bogdanov started to collect the tickets back from as with no explanation. It seemed a pointless
operation, not to say childish. Suddenly, in a flash of intuition. I realized
that this concerned me and that something terrible was going to happen. All
these elaborate maneuvers had simply been to prove too me that I gad a ticket
for London. Why
should I be offered this proof if I really were going? All this ridiculous mise
en scene had merely been to lull me
into a sense of false security.
Naturally
it had precisely the opposite effect. I had no doubts any longer. I was not
going to travel wish the rest of the company and some move was impending to
stop it. But what? I moved over to the bar to have a last drink with the few
friends I had asked to see me off, among whom were the Kirov Paris `impresario,
George Soria, and a dancer from the Paris Opera with whom I had spent much of
my free time. And why had shown me much of Paris. Another person who had been my close
companion was Clara, a beautiful Chilean girl, whom I had asked not to come to
the airport. It was with her that I had spent the whole of the previous night
walking through Paris.
We had parted in the happy knowledge that it was not to be for long as I knew
she was taking the next plane after mine for London. There were also journalists waiting
for us the bar and one newspaper critic whose articles on the Kirov and on myself had been among that he
had come specially to see me.
Also later — or rather, too late — I learned that he had
kept a motorcycle with the engine running, waiting in front of the exit, ready
to take me off after witnessing the ensuing scene. But at this point as the
company started to move off. Sergeyev came over to me at the bar and told me with a smile:
«Rudi,
you won`t be coming wish as now. You`ll join us in London in a couple of days.» At this my
heart sank. He went on: «We`ve just
received a wire from Moscow
saying that you are to dance in the Kremlin tomorrow. So we`ll be leaving you
now and you`ll take the Tupolev which leaves in two hours` time.» I felt
the blood drain from my face. Dance in the Kremlin indeed. That was a likely
story. This, I knew, was the final coup of a three-year campaign against me. I
had seen it coming all too clearly. I knew exactly where I stood and also what
this immediate recall to Moscow
would entail: no foreign travel ever again and the position of the star dancer
to which I was entitled in a couple of years would be forever denied me. I would be consigned to complete obscurity. I felt I would rather
kill myself.
I said to
Sergeyev that in that case I would go and say goodbye to the dancer. I walked
over towards them and told them of the decision to pack me off back to Moscow. It was a surprise
to everyone but they all understood what it implied. Most of the ballerinas
— even these who had always been openly against me — started to
cry. I know theatre people are easily moved, but all the same I was surprised
that they displayed so much warmth and emotion. They all begged me to go back
without any fuss. Promising that the first they would do upon their arrival in London would be to go to
the Soviet Embassy en masse. They would explain my attitude, convince them that there was nothing
political in my way of live, that I was simply an artist whose talent thrives
on an individual live of my own. That I needed to be left alone and
understood… «They will understand, you`ll see, and fly you straight back to
London. Go to Moscow. Do`t do anything foolish…
You`ll commit yourself forever id you do.» But I knew better. I knew that even the entire
Kirov Company raised their voices on my behalf it would be like a cry in the
wilderness and would pass completely unheard.
I thought
to myself. This is the end. A friend to whom I had often said how happy I would
be to stay longer in Europe on my own, was shaking me by the arm and begging
me to stay calm, to go back to Moscow, assuring me that after a little time I
would be back at the Kirov as if nothing had happened. I was aware of faces:
another friend, looking pale and worried, was walking round and round me in
agitation. A dancer who was not a friend stood watching, motionless. But no one
was taking any action and no one could lift a finger to help me. Minutes dragged by; time was running out
before I must board the plane. I felt in a daze but I asked someone to ring
Clara and say «goodbye», feeling I would never have the chance to
see her again.
Meanwhile,
the two Russian policemen who had been acting as bodyguards on our trip and who
were now supposed to take me back to Moscow, were talking with Sergeyev at the
Customs gate. Suddenly I saw one of them dash to the main exit of the airport
and stand there blocking the way. I knew that man only too well. Although I
knew for sure that not another single dancer in our company was followed or
reported on during our whole Paris
season, he had spied on every gesture of mine. Wherever I had gone I had always
found him in my way. Now he was once more in my way, and probably convinced to
talk to Sergeyev — what an improbable moment it seemed for a policeman to
be holding a cup of coffee — I slipped behind a column. And it was while
huddling there, feeling wretched and humiliated, that I saw Clara arrive. She
had taken barely 25 minutes to drive from her Quai d`Orsay apartment to Le
Bourget. I cried out to her that I`d taken my decision. That was all she needed
to hear. She rushed to the two Inspectors
on duty at the airport and told them that «there is a Russian
dancer downstairs who wants to stay in France». The Inspectors, as
they explained it to me later, told her they had no right to kidnap me, but
they were empowered to help me and then protect me if I was fully aware of the
implications of my decision, and had taken it entirely by my own volition.
Sergeyev had now left for London
wish the rest of the company,
leaving the second policeman alone. When he saw Clara coming back walking
between the two French Inspectors he snapped into action and made a rapid
search of the hall. He found me behind my column and tried to grab me and carry
me off to a small room where I am sure the Russian pilots were waiting for
take-off time for their Tupolev. I really don`t know what would have happened
if he had managed to get me into that room, but I managed to elude him and as
the hall was very crowded at that time he seemed to be afraid of making a
public scandal. I took advantage of this to walk back to the bar so that Clara
would be able tosspot me clearly. Suddenly I saw Clara at the other end of the
bar — I remember, strangely enough, that in is called «The Winged
Bar» — and I flew to her. Clara calmly suggested we had a last cup
of coffee before I left. I looked at her and than at the two French inspectors
standing nearby. Everything seemed to become blurred; I felt the urge to run
— yet for a second which seemed to last an eternity my muscles were so
heavy they might have been made of lead. I thought I would never be able to
move. And then I made it — in the longest, most breath-taking leap of my
whole career I landed squarely in the arms of the two inspectors. «I want
to stay,» I gasped. «I want to stay!»
I was now
in their care. But I was still fearful. For so long I had to be mistrustful
that my first thought was that the
French Government would merely make a gesture of protecting me, make a
loud publicity about my decision to stay and than turn me over to the Soviet
authorities. Instead of that, I found those two Inspectors, and in fact the
French police as a whole, to be polite, correct and honorable men.
The
Inspectors explained that I would have to sign a request form for an official
`sanctuary permit` but before that could be done, according to the rules. I must spent five minutes alone in a room
to reflect, away from all pressure,
on the decision I was about to take.
The room, they told me, had two doors. Should I decide to go back to Russia, one
door would lead me discreetly back into the hall from whence I could board the
Tupolev. Should I decide to stay in France, the other door led into their
own private office. As I was being let into the room a Soviet Embassy
secretary, Mikhail Klemenov, tried
to rush into the room with me. «Nureyev is a Soviet citizen,» I
heard him say to the Inspectors, «you must hand him over to me.»
«This is France, Monsieur,
and Monsieur Nureyev has placed
himself under our protection,» came the reply. «Then give me the
chance to speak wish him in that room,» Klemenov insisted.
«Monsieur Nureyev doesn`t
want to speak to anyone at the moment,» he was told. By now I was locked in, safely alone,
inside that small room. I could hear Klemenov`s voice, now raised to a shout:
«You`ve arrested him; this is absolutely illegal…»
Then there
was silence. I was alone. Four white walls and two doors. Two exits to two
different lives. For me this was already a return to dignity — the right to choose, the right I cherish
mast of all, that of self-determination. Naturally my thoughts turned to my
relatives — to my teacher Pushkin, a kind of second father to
me… Tamara, the girl I liked,
perhaps love. I felt really I didn`t know any more… the Kirov, to me the
first ballet company in the world,
all
that I had held most dear and had made me into what I am. Yet at the
same time, the life of daily, niggling persecution, insinuations, petty
denunciations. The kind of life which, as I well knew, had caused some young
artist of my own generation to put an and to in on by jumping in the river
rather than carry on a hopeless fight. On the other hand, what lay in store for
me on other side of the fence, here
in Europe? I would be alone, but not un the
way I had always longed for; this would be utter solitude. The new freedom wore
an austere look. Yet I knew it was the only choice because it alone offered the
hope of being at last able to really do something, to learn, to see, to grow.
There was a hope of this, and that
was enough. As the Russian saying goes: a young man lives o hope alone. I made
my way into the Inspectors` office. My new life had begun.
Clara left.
I told her that I must drive with two Inspectors to the Paris Prefecture of
Police and that I would call her from there to decide what to do
next… where to go.
On the
airfield a car drew up to a small door known only to the pilots. Soon, with the
two Inspectors. I found myself taking the same road I had driven along a couple
of hours before. Yet I wasn`t the same man. This was freedom, yet ironically,
freedom was taking on the form of ins exact opposite. Once again, policemen were on either
side of me, but French this time. I was entering on a new life almost naked as
when I was born. All my luggage had gone on to London in the plane. Lost in these suitcases
were my dearest worldly possessions: a collection of ballet shoes and leotards
I had bought everywhere I had danced in Russia,
of course, but also in Germany,
Austria, Bulgaria and Egypt. These I could never replace.
Lost, too, was a wig I had had made to order in Paris to wear as Albrecht in Giselle. That
wig was so blond and curly and
romantic I had jokingly called in «Marilyn Monroeу». And most of all I
regretted my very first
Purchase in
Paris — a beautiful electric train, symbol of the fascination I have felt
ever since I was a baby for railways, train, and smoky stations, and the
beckoning promise I have always felt them to hold of distant horizons and mysteries
elsewhere.
It is article
from the book " Three years at the Kirov
theatre ". The author of a site thanks L.P.Myasnikova and
T.I.Zakrzhevskaja for this gift.