Rudolf Nureyev, Yuri Bogatyrev and other hidden gays from the world of Soviet stars. Rudolf Nureyev Ballet dancer Nureyev

Legends were made about his temper, selfishness, stinginess and unbridled love for men. He lived greedily and mercilessly wasted his time, energy, talent, and feelings. But he did not know that he would pay a terrible price for his gluttony, monstrous, but inevitable, like any payment on the bill.

In his official biography they write that Rudolf Nureyev was born in Irkutsk. In fact, Rudolf's real name is not Nureyev, but Nureyev. He became Nureyev later, when he became famous. And Irkutsk arose due to the fact that it was impossible to write down in the passport that a person burst into this life quickly and originally, to the sound of the wheels of a train rushing across the expanses of the country, and so he lived his life on the road: in the morning in Paris, in the afternoon in London, the next day in Montreal.
Nureyev was born quickly, just as he lived his entire life. He flew into the light of day on a very cold morning on March 17, 1938 at the junction of the steppes of Central Asia and the mountains of Mongolia - on a train rushing to the Far East, falling straight into the hands of his ten-year-old sister Rosa. His mother Farida was heading to the place of service of her husband Khamit, a political instructor in the Soviet Army. His sisters were traveling on the train with my mother: Rosa, Rozida and Lilya. In the family, the only person with whom Rudolf was truly close in those days was his sister Rose.
On both sides, our relatives are the Tatars and Bashkirs." He was proud of his nation and, in general, really looked like a swift, headstrong descendant of Genghis Khan, as he was repeatedly called. On occasion, he could emphasize that his people were ruled over the Russians for three centuries. “The Tatar is a good complex of animal traits, and that’s what I am.”

Just a few months after arriving in Vladivostok, his mother Farida and her four children were again traveling on a train along the Trans-Siberian Railway. This time they were heading to Moscow along with Khamet Nureyev - a simple Tatar peasant who managed to take advantage of the changes that took place in the country after the October Revolution of 1917 and eventually rose to the rank of major - was transferred to Moscow.
A child of the new Russia, Khamet worked for the all-powerful military-industrial complex, a job that required constant travel. He belonged to the new team of political instructors that the Soviet government trained. The children already knew that the passion for travel had become second nature to their father, and it was this trait that his son Rudolf inherited from him.
But in 1941, after Germany attacked the Soviet Union, the Second World War and Hammett goes to the front. Farida is evacuated from Moscow with her four children to her native Bashkiria, where he spends his childhood. She lives in a small hut in the village of Chishuana with her children during the war years.
Their food all day long is a piece of goat cheese or an empty potato. One day, unable to wait for the potatoes to cook, Rudik tried to get them, overturned the pot on himself and ended up in the hospital. Where I was able to eat to my heart's content, which could not be said about homemade food. The Nureyevs lived very poorly. Rudik grows up without a father as a quiet and closed child. His favorite hobby At that time, he listened to gramophone records; he especially adored the music of Tchaikovsky or Beethoven. He grew up; as the only son in a Tatar family; in the village.
The time was very difficult: as the dancer later recalled, the winters in Ufa were so long and cold that the snot on his nose froze, and when it was time to go to school, he had nothing to wear - he had to put on the coat of one of his sisters.

However, there was a good opera house in Ufa; at one time Chaliapin himself made his debut there.
On New Year's Eve 1945, December 31, Nureyev's mother Farida sees Rudolph and his sisters off with just one ticket in hand to watch the performance of the Bolshoi Theater, which came to Ufa for the ballet "Song of the Cranes" in which the main role was performed by the Bashkir ballerina Zaituna Nasretdinova. He fell in love with ballet. Rudolf was delighted and recalls: “The first trip to the theater lit a special fire in me, brought inexpressible happiness. Something took me away from my miserable life and lifted me to heaven. As soon as I entered the magic hall, I left the real world and was captured by a dream. Since then I became obsessed, I heard the “call”. At that time, I was studying in a school choreographic ensemble and was achieving new successes and dreamed of entering the Leningrad Choreographic School. For about eight years I lived as if possessed, blind and deaf to everything except dance... Then I felt that I had escaped from the dark world, forever."

In 1948 elder sister Rudolf Rosa brought him to the Teacher's House to Anna Ivanovna Udaltsova, with whom she herself studied.
Professional ballerina Udaltsova, even before the revolution, as part of the famous Diaghilev troupe, traveled all over the world, performed with Pavlova, Karsavina, and was friends with Chaliapin. An intelligent, educated woman, she was fluent in three languages. She taught her students not only dance, but introduced them to music and literature. In addition, she was a sincere person, and her kindness transformed everyone who interacted with her.
Anna Ivanovna soon recognized her unique abilities and passion little boy to dance and practiced a lot with him. “This is a future genius!” - she said.
He began to dream about ballet and danced every free minute in front of the mirror. “Mom laughed and clapped as I spun around on one leg.”

This led to a conflict between him and his father, who had returned from the war. Khamet Nureyev was harsh and stern. Rudolf was afraid of him and did not like him. His son's penchant for dancing infuriated his father. My father brutally eradicated my strange passion for music and dancing and beat me for attending a dance club in the House of Pioneers.
“It’s not even scary that he hit. He talked all the time. Endlessly. Without stopping. He said that he would make a man out of me, and that I would thank him again, locked the door and did not let me out of the house. And he yelled that I was growing up to be a ballerina. At least in some ways I fully met his expectations. He turned off the radio so we could listen. There’s almost no music left.”
But I couldn’t beat the crap out of him. “Ballet is not a profession for a man,” said Nureyev Sr. and wanted his son to go to a vocational school and acquire a reliable working profession.
“I was lucky. Almost no one on our street had fathers. And everyone came up with their own folder. Strong, brave, who will take you hunting with you or teach you how to fish. And my father is a hero! The whole chest is decorated with orders. They even envied the marks left by the rod on my ass. Only I wanted him to leave... Then he came to see me at the theater. He even applauded. And, I remember, he shook my hand. And I looked at him and thought that here he was, a stranger, old, sick. And now I can hit him, but he doesn’t have the strength to fight back... It’s strange, now I don’t feel offended, I just erased from my memory everything that hurt.”

Nureyev himself later did not like to remember his past.
His motto was: "Never look back."
Rudolf was 14 years old when he secretly left home to dance in a children's folk group. I danced hopak, lezginka and gypsy with an exit. And I must say, he danced so well that teachers Anna Udaltsova and her friend Elena Vaitovich decided to send him. And not just anywhere, but to Leningrad, to the Vaganova Ballet School in one of the best ballet schools in the world!
Well, as they say, they sent it like that!

On August 17, 1955, seventeen-year-old Rudolf Nureyev found himself on a small Leningrad street, built in the 19th century by Carl Rossi for theater, music and drama schools at the Imperial Theater. Exactly a week later he entered the Leningrad Choreographic School.

After the examination performance, Vera Kostrovitskaya, one of the oldest teachers at the school, approached the heavily breathing young man and said: “Young man, you can become a brilliant dancer, or you can become nothing. The second is more likely."
September 1, 1955, when classes began and he was given a place in the hostel, prepared him in many ways for the ascension to come. He already understood that determination leads to victory, he knew how to stand up for himself, and he sensed the enemy unmistakably.

The whole school came running to look at the Ufa nugget - the nugget was 17 years old, and he did not know how to put his feet in the first position. ""In Leningrad, he finally got his feet seriously put in first position - this is very late for a classical dancer. He was desperately trying to catch up with his peers,” Baryshnikov later wrote. Every day, all day long, he danced. Problems with technique infuriated him. In the middle of the rehearsal, he "I could burst into tears and run away. But then, at about ten o'clock in the evening, I would return to class and work alone on the movement until I mastered it."
When he came to the first rehearsal at the theater, he immediately rebuffed the ballet hazing. According to tradition, the youngest child had to water the classroom floor with a watering can. Everyone is standing, waiting. Nureyev is also waiting. Finally they hint to him that it would be a good idea to water the floor. In response, he shows everyone the bullshit: “First of all, I’m not young. And then, there are such mediocrities here who only need to water.” The men were taken aback by such impudence. But they fell silent. Moreover, there was nothing else left - they were taught to dance, not fight.
Nuriev danced at the Kirovsky for only three years, and far from brilliantly - in the West his technique would become much more
more polished. But even in this short period of time he managed to do important thing: brought back value to men's dance. Before him, in the 1940s and 50s, a man on the ballet stage was just an assistant to a female ballerina.
Nuriev showed himself to be an extremely hardworking student - he studied and trained a lot. “He absorbed everything like a sponge,” friends recall in unison.
For a whole year, Rudolph endured the curses of the first teacher Shelkov, and then achieved a transfer to another teacher. When Nureyev entered his class, Alexander Ivanovich Pushkin was already known as the most respected male dance teacher in the country.

The restraint of Pushkin's behavior and the apparent ease of his studies somehow miraculously and imperceptibly gave rise to passion and obsession in his students. Nureyev felt the irresistible force of his influence: “He filled the soul with excitement and a craving for dance.”
Under the tutelage of the great teacher, Alexander Pushkin, Nureyev's talent blossomed.
His pedagogical fame was great. Nureyev was his favorite student. Nureyev's zeal captivated Pushkin, as did his musicality. Nureyev was never offended by criticism. Pushkin adored him. He was a great man, he gave Nureyev everything.
Pushkin was not only interested in him professionally, but also allowed him to live with him and his wife - Ksenia Yurgenson, just 21 years old and a former Kirovsky ballerina, was something of a guardian angel for Nureyev, and Nureyev began an affair with her. ... She was one of the few who knew how to extinguish his attacks of rage. “That day I got into a fight, yelled at Ksenia, and then cried, buried in her lap. And she stroked my hair and kept saying: “My poor, poor boy.”
Over the years, his character became more and more bad.
On May 11, 1961, the Kirov Ballet troupe flew to Paris, Nureyev never saw Alexander Ivanovich again, although he always remembered his cozy apartment in the courtyard of the Choreographic School. It was a home where he was loved.)
After graduating from the Institute, both the Kirov and Bolshoi theaters wanted to see Nureyev in their troupes. He chose the Kirov Theater and became its soloist, which was extremely unusual for his age and experience. Ballerina Ninel Kurgapkina more than once told Nureyev, who was her partner, that he danced too much like a woman. Nuriev was sincerely indignant at this: “Don’t you understand? I’m still a young man!”

It was Nuriev who made the role of a partner in ballet significant. Before him, in Soviet ballet, the partner was perceived as a secondary participant, called upon to support the ballerina. Nureyev's dance was amazingly powerful. He was the first among Soviet dancers to appear on stage wearing only tights. Before him, dancers wore baggy short pants or wore panties under tights. For Nureyev, the body could not be shameful. He wanted to show not just the dramaturgy of dance, but the beauty and strength of the human body in movement.
“Rudolph stretched out his body, stood on high, high half-toes and stretched his whole body up, up. He made himself tall, elegant and beautifully built,” Baryshnikov commented on his style.
He became one of the most famous dancers in the Soviet Union. Soon he was allowed to travel abroad with the troupe. He took part in the International Youth Festival in Vienna. But for disciplinary reasons he was soon forbidden to leave the borders of the USSR. Nureyev was a homosexual, which was punishable by law in the Soviet Union.
Homosexual orientation also adjusted Nureyev’s dance in an unusual way.
“I lived on Sadovaya Street,” said Trofonov. “I looked: two handsome guys. One in uniform, a Suvorov veteran, the other in jeans (no one had jeans back then) - Nuriev. And they were kissing amazingly. I stopped. Nuriev turned around and asked: “Do you like it?” I answered: “Amazing!” And then we met in London. He recognized me. We started talking. And he gave me his book with a dedicatory inscription: “To a victim of the regime from a victim of ballet.” Gennady Trifonov "
The words of the great artist contain the bitter truth - in the stagnant USSR, being a homosexual meant constantly being under the threat of arrest, police bullying and insults, and finally, a difficult fate in prison and colony. In this regard, the fate of the same Gennady Trifonov, a graduate of the Faculty of Philology, who was imprisoned for four years on a fabricated case, is very indicative.

In 1961, Nuriev's situation changed. The soloist of the Kirov Theater, Konstantin Sergeev, was injured, and Nuriev replaced him (at the last minute!) in European tour theater
This is how Nureyev was recognized on the world stage!
Ten days later, Nureyev appeared on the stage of the Paris Opera for the first time! La Bayadère was on; Solor was his favorite part. His divine plasticity was immediately noted. “The Kirov Ballet has found its cosmonaut, his name is Rudolf Nureyev,” the newspapers wrote. Fans crowded around him. He became friends with Claire Mott and Attilio Labis - the stars of French ballet instantly appreciated his rare gift. And especially with Clara Saint, who loved ballet and was constantly hanging out backstage at the Opera. It was she who was destined to play a special role in his fate. She was engaged to the son of the French Minister of Culture, André Malraux, and her connections in the highest spheres were immense. First of all, he took Klara to watch his favorite ballet - “The Stone Flower” staged by Yuri Grigorovich; he himself was not involved in it. Grigorovich was not allowed into Paris, but Nuriev highly valued his talent as a choreographer.
He behaved freely, walked around the city, stayed late in restaurants on Saint-Michel, went alone to listen to Yehudi Menuhin (he played Bach at the Pleyel Hall) and did not take into account the rules within which Soviet dancers existed.

In Paris, he could not keep his contacts with the “blues” secret from KGB agents. “Despite the preventive conversations held with him, Nuriev did not change his behavior...” An order came from Moscow: punish Nureyev!
At the airport, a few minutes before the troupe’s departure to London, where the second part of the tour was to take place, Rudolf was given a ticket to Moscow with the words: “You must dance at a government reception in the Kremlin. We have just received a telegram from Moscow. Your plane is in half an hour.” (although all his things were packed and were in the luggage going to London).
Everything that happened at Le Bourget airport on that distant day, June 17, 1961, in Paris, was best described by Nureyev himself: “I felt the blood drain from my face. Dancing in the Kremlin, how... A beautiful fairy tale. I knew: I would forever lose my trips abroad and the title of soloist. I will be consigned to oblivion. I just wanted to commit suicide. I made the decision because I had no other choice. And whatever the negative consequences of this step may be, I do not regret it.”
Newspapers vying with each other on the front pages gave loud headlines: “Ballet star and drama at Le Bourget airport”, “A girl sees how the Russians are pursuing her friend.” This girl was Clara Saint. He called her from the police station, but she asked him not to come to her, since Soviet agents were hanging around her house, they were easy to recognize - they were all dressed in the same raincoats and soft velor hats.
Twenty minutes later Clara was at the airport with two police officers. SHE came to accompany Nureyev to the airport, came up to say goodbye, hugged her and whispered in his ear: “You must go up to those two policemen and say - I want to stay in France. They are waiting for you.” In 1961, in order to stay in the West, you did not have to prove that you were being persecuted in the USSR - you just had to throw yourself into the arms of the servants of the law. Here Nuriev tried his best. He didn’t just rush, he jumped. Gracefully. Moreover, the police were nice. Suspecting something was wrong, state security officers began to push Nureyev back, but he broke free and made one of his famous jumps, landing right in the hands of the police with the words: “I want to be free”! While in custody, he was taken to a special room, from where there were two exits: to the gangway Soviet plane and to the French police. In private, he had to make a decision. Then he signed a paper asking to be granted political asylum in France.

When Rudik remained abroad, Alexander Ivanovich had a heart attack.
A.I. Pushkin died tragically on March 20, 1970 in Leningrad. Alexander Ivanovich had an incident on the street heart attack. And when he fell, he asked passers-by for help, and heard reproaches that he was drunk. After all, to the question: - What is his name? - Answered: - Alexander Pushkin...

For many years, Nureyev was harassed by anonymous threatening calls, most often just before going on stage, his mother was forced to call her son and persuade him to return to his homeland. His dramatic "renunciation", outstanding dance technique, exotic appearance, and amazing charisma on stage made him a world famous ballet star. But all this happened later, and then...
It was necessary to start a new life. When he decided to stay, he had only 36 francs in his pocket.
At first, Rudolph was placed in a house opposite the Luxembourg Gardens, in a Russian family. Friends visited him.
In fact, the “world of freedom” turned out to be surprisingly complex. Two detectives accompanied him everywhere.
Within a week, he was accepted into the Grand Ballet du Marquis de Cuevas. The daily routine was scheduled strictly minute by minute; they were afraid of actions from the Soviet secret services: class, rehearsals, lunch at a nearby restaurant and home.

He had a strange eating regime: he loved steak and sweet tea with lemon and ate more like an athlete than a gourmet.
The situation in which he found himself only contributed to depression - there were no classes to which he was accustomed, there was no familiar discipline that created the life of the body, without which it was impossible to become the ideal dance master that he strived for. Mediocrity and bad taste reigned here; there were few good dancers.
It turned out that he knew very little about Western life and Western ballet. It seemed to him that this world was magnificent, but now he was faced with reality: weak schools, handicraft performance. The young man became a skeptic.
There was no familiar atmosphere, traditions to which I was accustomed. At times he was overcome by despair: had he made a mistake? The Soviet embassy sent him a telegram from his mother and two letters: one from his father, the other from his teacher Alexander Ivanovich Pushkin. Pushkin wrote to him that Paris is a decadent city, that if he remains in Europe, he will lose moral purity and, most importantly, the technical virtuosity of dance, that he must immediately return home, where no one can understand his actions. The father's letter was short: his son betrayed his homeland, and there is no justification for this. The mother’s telegram was even shorter: “Come home.”

Two months after his escape, Nureyev danced in the troupe of the Marquis de Cuvas, and six months later he went to New York to see choreographer George Balanchine. In February 1962, he signed a contract with the Royal London Ballet, which in itself was an unprecedented fact: people without British citizenship were not accepted into the royal ballet, but an exception was made for Nureyev - where he shone for more than 15 years. In England, Nureyev made his debut on November 2, 1961 in a charity concert, and in February 1962 he performed at the London Royal Ballet Covent Gar in the play Giselle.

His partner was Margot Fonteyn.
Vera Volkova, his teacher in Copenhagen, spent a long time convincing Margot Fonteyn to take him to her gala concert. Having exhausted all arguments, she exclaimed: “You should have seen his nostrils!” These nostrils ultimately decided the fate of Nureyev: he became the premier of the Royal Theater in London. 23 years old, he became the regular partner of the theater's diva, Dame (the equivalent of a knighthood for women).
They danced together for fifteen years. They were considered not just an ideal ballet couple, but the most famous duet in the history of ballet. At the time of their meeting, she was 43 years old, he was 24. Their collaboration began with the ballet “Giselle”. And in 1963, choreographer Ashton staged the ballet “Margaret and Armand” for them. Nuriev himself revived the production of Petipa's ballet La Bayadère. By the time she met Rudolf, her performing career was winding down. With a new partner, she found a second wind. It was an inspired union of the world's most reserved ballerina and the most hot-tempered dancer. Together they - “the Tatar Prince and the English Lady,” as the press called them - conquered the jaded and snobbish New York at a gala concert on January 18, 1965.

Nureyev and Fontaine hold the Guinness Book of Records record for the number of calls to bow - after the performance of “Swan Lake” at the Vienna State Opera in 1964, the curtain rose more than eighty times!!!
“When my time comes, will you push me off the stage?” - she asked once. "Never!" - he answered. In 1971, the great ballerina (her real name is Peggy Hookham) left the stage.
Many journalists wrote that they were connected by platonic love. According to one Western publication, Fontaine gave birth to a daughter from Nureyev, but the girl soon died. Whether this is so is unknown. However, eyewitnesses recall the passionate looks that Margo sent to Rudolf.

In her book “Rudolph Nureyev on Stage and in Life,” Diana Solway writes: “Rudolph for a long time did not recognize himself as homosexual. Over time, he began to turn only to men for sexual gratification. “With women you have to work so hard, and this doesn’t satisfy me very much,” he told Violette Verdi years later. “But with men everything is very fast. Great pleasure.” He never hid his orientation and declared it relatively openly, but at the same time he very skillfully avoided open questions from the press. “To know what it is to make love as a man and a woman is a special knowledge,”
Nureyev had affairs with the legendary lead singer of the group "Qween" Freddie Mercury, with Elton John; and, according to rumors, even with the unforgettable Jean Marais. But his greatest love was the dancer Eric Brun.
Despite a six-month contract with Cuevas, Nureyev left Paris at the end of the summer and settled in Copenhagen, mainly to meet the teacher Vera Volkova, who had emigrated from Russia. The great Danish classical dancer Erik Brun also lived in Copenhagen; considered the most refined Prince ever to dance in Giselle. First Nureyev fell in love with his dance, and then with him.

Eric Brun was an outstanding dancer who captivated Russian audiences during a tour of the American Ballet Theater in 1960. Nureyev was captivated by him, his manner, his elegance, the classicism of his art, his human qualities. Brun was 10 years older than him, tall and handsome, like a god.
“Brun is the only dancer who managed to amaze me. Someone called him too cold. It really is so cold that it burns.” And years later, Nuriev burned himself on this ice.
Many noted that they were complete opposites of each other. Nureyev is a passionate, frantic Tatar, almost a savage, and Brun is a calm, reasonable Scandinavian. Brun was all sophistication. Restrained, balanced. Tall blond with blue eyes. In general, Nuriev disappeared. Oh, why, I'm sorry, girls, you love beautiful ones...

They fought constantly. As they say: “They got along. Wave and stone, poetry and prose, ice and fire." Rudolph, when it seemed to him that something was wrong in their relationship, yelled, stomped his feet and threw things around the apartment, and the frightened Eric ran away from the house. Nuriev rushed after him and begged him to return. “Our meeting was like the collision and explosion of two comets,” Eric sublimely commented on these kitchen showdowns.
Rudy was once asked if he was afraid of exposure? In response, he laughed and promised to shout to the whole world that he loved Eric. "- Why should I be afraid? They will find out that I’m gay and stop coming to my performances? No. Nijinsky, Lifar, and Diaghilev himself. And Tchaikovsky... That women will want me less? That would be nice... But, I’m afraid , even the assertion that I am a hermaphrodite will not stop them; it will only spur curiosity."
Nuriev also constantly cheated on his beloved. Eric did not like such promiscuity. He was jealous, suffered and periodically collected money. Nuriev begged to stay, swore that he loved only him, swore that this would not happen again...
Blah-blah-blah... In short, he told unfortunate Eric everything that strolling men usually say to their unfortunate wives in such cases.

In addition to jealousy, he was also tormented by the fact that he, a talented dancer, in many ways even more talented than Nureyev, was completely eclipsed by the insane popularity of his lover. This, of course, was unfair. But the myth about Nureyev in the West was promoted with such force that no other dancer simply could compete with him. The public greeted any appearance of Nureyev on stage with an ovation. “He only had to lift his toe to make hearts beat like tom-toms,” wrote one critic.
This hysterical interest convinced Brun that he himself would forever remain unnoticed. Upset by the constant talk about Nureyev's triumphs, a drunk Brun once lost his temper and accused Rudolf of coming from the USSR only to destroy him, Brun. Hearing this, Nuriev burst into tears: “How can you be so cruel?!”
In short, this could not last long. Tired of the Tatar yoke, Eric fled to the ends of the world - to Australia. Nuriev called his beloved every day and wondered why Eric was rude to him on the phone. “Maybe we should call once or twice a week? - Rudolf’s friends advised. “Perhaps Eric wants to be alone.” But Rudolf didn't think so. He decided to fly to Sydney, but during the flight he almost got into trouble. Nuriev knew perfectly well that the KGB was looking for him all over the world in order to kidnap him and return him to the USSR. During a stopover in Cairo this almost happened. The pilot suddenly asked all passengers to leave the plane, explaining this by technical problems. Everyone left, and only the genius of world ballet remained sitting, frantically clutching the arms of his chair. He was really scared. “Help,” Nuriev said to the flight attendant who approached. “The KGB is hunting me.” The flight attendant looked at him as if he was crazy, but, looking out the window, she saw two men quickly heading towards the plane. “Go to the toilet,” she whispered to Nureyev. “I’ll tell them it doesn’t work.” KGB officers completely searched the plane and even knocked on the door of the locked toilet. “I looked in the mirror and saw how I was turning gray,” Nureyev later recalled.
But the relationship with Eric never improved. I was flying in vain. “I can’t be with him, we’re ruining each other,” Brun complained to his friends. And Nuriev told the same friends that he would forever connect his life with Eric if he allowed him to do so. To which Eric again replied: “Rudolph declared me a model of freedom and independence - I always did what I wanted. Well, what happened between us in the first years - explosions, collisions - it could not last long. If Rudolph wanted things to be different, well, I'm sorry."
So unoriginally - “I’m very sorry” - this stormy love affair ended.

Nureyev gave at least 300 performances a year in all corners of the world and never left the stage for more than two weeks. They said that he did not dance only in Antarctica.
Traveling around the world, Nuriev was influenced by a variety of ballet schools - Danish, American, English - while remaining faithful to the Russian classical school. This was the essence of “Nuriev’s style”. During his career, he danced, perhaps, all the main male roles. He skillfully maintained the audience's interest in himself. He flirted and teased. As critics said: “One of the main lines of creating his own stage image was the desire to undress as much as possible during the performance.” Nureyev often appeared on stage bare-chested, and in his own version of The Sleeping Beauty he first appeared wrapped in a long, floor-length cape. Then he turned his back to the audience and slowly lowered her until she finally froze just below her perfectly defined buttocks. Nureyev carefully preserved this art of presenting himself until the very end of his career. “I dance for my own pleasure,” he said more than once. “If you're trying to please everyone, it's not original.”
He was constantly surrounded by a swarm of admirers - elderly ladies and handsome young men. He was shocked by the fact that he kissed passionately in public. Seeing the confusion of those around him, he was delighted. And he said that this is an old Russian custom (!!!).
He never suffered from nostalgia. To his Parisian friend, who complained that he was homesick in a foreign land without family and friends, he snapped: “Don’t attribute your thoughts to me. I’m completely happy here, I don’t miss anyone or anything. Life has given me everything I wanted.” , every chance." He lived like this not for a year or two, but for decades.
He did not think that very soon he would have to pay the highest price for his gluttony.
In the meantime, he worked a lot and drank a lot.

Ballet school dancers practiced abstinence before a performance, and Nuriev claimed that he could not dance unless he had been in someone’s arms. The routine is as follows: first - sex, then - lunch.
“Another night; - Roland Petit said. - Rudolf took me to the outskirts of the central station, to the area where drag queens reigned. We walked past powdered men with unnaturally plump lips, long braids, and fishnet stockings balancing on high heels. Some coquettishly wrapped themselves in a nylon fur coat, while others boldly threw open their hem, showing off their naked body. Theater of the Absurd! A waking nightmare, a dream or delirium... I can’t say for sure! At some point I became really scared. Rudolf was clearly amused by my confusion; he himself laughed heartily and felt, I must say, great. Danger turned him on. Off stage, he needed the same dose of adrenaline... I didn’t understand how this “god”, dancing brilliantly on stage in the light of day, turns into a demonic character with the onset of darkness.”
Having escaped from the taboos and prohibitions of his socialist homeland, Nureyev longed to taste the sexual paradise that he found in the West. There were no complexes or remorse here: having seen something he liked, Nureyev had to get it. His desires came first, and he satisfied them under any circumstances, day and night, on the streets, in bars, gay saunas. Once, coming out of the service entrance of the Paris Opera and seeing a crowd of fans, Rudolph exclaimed: “Where are the boys?”

Excessive wealth was very destructive and corrupting. I thought that I could buy everything, but I simply didn’t consider it necessary to pay for a lot of things. He hid his financial reports from literally everyone. His pathological stinginess became the talk of the town.
A noble lover on stage, in life he could be quite rude and harsh. With Igor Moiseev, they did not even get to the restaurant where they were going to have dinner together. “In the car, I noticed,” Moiseev recalled, “that Nureyev’s mood had changed sharply. At the end of some phrase, he swore obscenely. I could not explain the reason for his dissatisfaction, although they told me about his obnoxious character. After a while he expressed himself even more sharply. Here I could not resist: “Is this really all that you have left of the Russian language?” My phrase infuriated Nureyev.” Without having time to become friends and have a human conversation, they parted.
Tatyana Kizilova - a Russian emigrant of the first wave in Paris: “We collected money for Russians in need in Paris, and I personally turned to Nureyev, who was then in charge of the Grand Opera. And he drove me away with the words: “You can’t give to all the poor.” He was incredibly stingy. person. Soon Nuriev came to our church and wanted to donate, but he was refused. And literally a year later he died. Apparently, he came as a completely sick person, wanted to repent and help... But he was refused."
For his performances, the master asked for fabulous fees and never carried pocket money: his friends paid for him everywhere, in restaurants and shops. At the same time, Nuriev could spend tens of thousands of dollars on the purchase of dubious art and antiques. Friends shrugged, believing that this was compensation for their hungry Ufa childhood.
His Paris apartment was literally filled with such things; the dancer especially liked paintings and sculptures with naked male bodies. Houses and apartments were a separate passion: he owned mansions all over the world - a villa near Monaco, a Victorian house in London, an apartment in Paris, an apartment in New York, a farm in Virginia, a villa on the island of St. Barths in Caribbean, property on the island of Li Galli near Naples..., Nureyev even had his own island in the Mediterranean Sea. The most stunning purchase - two islands in the Mediterranean Sea - cost him $40 million. Nuriev's fortune was estimated at $80 million.

For more than 20 years, the dance genius took from life what he wanted: pleasure, money, fame and admiration.
In 1983, Nuriev accepted an offer from the Paris Grand Opera, becoming simultaneously a soloist, choreographer and director. And again here he found himself in his usual and beloved role - alone against everyone. The troupe, which had been torn by intrigue and scandals before his arrival, now rallied against the new choreographer. Nuriev demanded unquestioning obedience, and the artists did not like some of the boss’s behavior habits and his manner of communication. The war, which lasted all six years of his tenure in this position, ended in favor of the “strong” Nureyev, who managed to create a single ensemble from the troupe.
It seemed that his strength and energy were limitless, as was his wealth and fame. The loan took a long time to accumulate. Fate gave him too much without demanding anything in return. But the time came, and Rudolf had to pay a terrible price.
The disease was discovered in the great dancer at the end of 1984. Nuriev himself came to see the young Parisian doctor Michel Canesi, whom he had met the year before at the London Ballet Festival. Nuriev was examined in one of the prestigious clinics and was given a devastating diagnosis - AIDS (it had already developed in the patient’s body over the past 4 years).

I accepted my diagnosis calmly. He was sure that his money and the professionalism of his doctors would not let him die. He's used to buying everything. Is it really possible that he won’t pay himself off now?
But every year life takes everything from Nuriev more strength and brings more and more trials. In 1986, Brun became seriously ill, Nuriev, abandoning everything, came to him. “My friend Eric Brun helped me more than I can express,” Nureyev said in an interview. “I need him more than anyone.” They talked until late, but when Rudolph returned to him the next morning, Eric could no longer talk, but only followed Rudolph with his eyes. Brun died in March 1986. The official diagnosis was Cancer, but evil tongues claimed that Brun was sick with AIDS. Rudolph took Eric's death seriously and was never able to recover from this blow. Do not give your loved ones too beautiful, because the hand that gave and the hand that received will inevitably part...
Together with Eric, youthful recklessness and ardent carelessness left his life. Eric's photograph always stood on his desk. Even after the death of the famous Danish dancer, Nureyev never forgot him - he meant too much in his life.
He was left alone with himself, advancing old age and a fatal illness. And although Nureyev somehow passionately said: “What is this AIDS to me? I’m a Tatar, I’ll fuck him, and not he me,” Rudolf understood that he was running out of time.

The next year brings even more terrible news - Rudolph's mother dies in Ufa. Back in 1976, a committee consisting of famous cultural figures was created, which collected more than ten thousand signatures asking for permission to leave the USSR for Rudolf Nureyev’s mother. Forty-two senators of the United States of America appealed personally to the country's leaders, the UN interceded for Nuriev, but everything turned out to be useless. Only after Mikhail Gorbachev came to power was Nureyev able to make two trips to his homeland. Only in 1987 was he allowed to come to Ufa for a short time in order to say goodbye to his dying mother, who by that time no longer recognized anyone. At Sheremetyevo, journalists asked him what he thought of Gorbachev. “He is better than others,” Nureyev said. For Nureyev, this was a desperately bold incursion into politics: neither under Khrushchev nor under Gorbachev did he care about politics at all.
Finally, after much effort, Rudolph got the opportunity to visit his homeland. Just before his mother’s death, in November 1987, the Gorbachev government allowed the artist a short visit to Ufa to say goodbye to her. But when he finally saw his mother again after twenty-seven years of separation, the old dying woman did not recognize this man, who had just traveled five thousand miles, as her son.

In 1990, he visited Russia to say goodbye to the Mariinsky Theater, where he once began his career. And in 1991, completely exhausted, Nuriev even decided to change his profession - he decided to try himself as a conductor and successfully performed in this capacity in many countries.
1992, his illness progressed to last stage. “I understand that I’m getting old, there’s no getting away from it. I think about it all the time, I hear the clock ticking my time on stage, and I often say to myself: you only have a little time left...”
Nuriev was in a hurry - he really wanted to complete the production of the play “Boyaderka”. And fate gave him this chance.
On October 8, 1992, after the premiere of La Boyadere, Nuriev, reclining in a chair, received on stage France's highest award in the field of culture, the title of Chevalier of the Legion of Honor. The audience gave a standing ovation. Nureyev could not get up from his chair...

For some time, Nuriev felt better, but soon he would go to the hospital and never come out.
He spent the last hundred days of his life in Paris. This city opened the way for Nureyev to the world of fame and wealth, and it also closed the doors behind him.
“Am I finished now?” - he constantly asked his doctor. He could no longer eat anything. He was given nutrition through a vein. According to the doctor who was constantly next to Nuriev, the great dancer died quietly and without suffering. This happened on January 6, 1993, he was fifty-four years old. With him in the room were his nurse and sister Rosa, who was destined to be present at the birth and death of her brother...
In his opera there was a coffin with a wreath of white lilies, the same ones that Prince Albert placed on Giselle’s grave. To the sounds of Tchaikovsky, six of his favorite dancers and the applause of almost 700 people carried his coffin along the marble steps of the Temple of the Ballet to the Russian cemetery of Sainte-Geneviève des Bois in Paris

The farewell ceremony was arranged in style: during the civil funeral service in the building of the Grand Opera, they played Bach and Tchaikovsky, the artists read Pushkin, Byron, Goethe, Rimbaud, Michelangelo in five languages ​​- such was his dying will. The memorial service was held according to both Muslim and Orthodox rites. Nuriev lay in a coffin in a strict black suit and a turban, that one; who greedily took from life everything that it offered him: fame, passion, money, power; unaware that all this is given on credit. Probably, before his death, he already knew exactly what it was to pay bills.
And to top it all off, they buried Nureyev next to Sergei Lifar, whom Rudolf could not stand all his life. The grave was covered with a Persian carpet. So, among Orthodox crosses Russian noble tombs, under the ringing of bells, an unrivaled dance magician found his last refuge.
Christmas Eve came down to earth without him...

Rudolf Nureyev

Dance of a lifetime

Rumors that the Kirov Ballet was going on tour to Paris crawled around the theater. Nureyev did not believe that they would take him. Paris was a dream. It was the spring of 1961. The theater was preparing for a tour, they said that after Paris they would go to London. Everything was unclear. His beloved partner Alla Shelest was removed from the trip at the very last moment. In the Leningrad troupe he danced with Alla Sizova, Irina Kolpakova, Ninel Kurgapkina, Alla Osipenko, but Alla Shelest was his deity. With her he danced “Giselle” and “Laurencia”. The inaccessibility of her jeep and Laurencia's pride inspired his rare gift. He also danced Laurencia with Natalia Dudinskaya, the first ballerina of the Kirov Ballet. Nureyev appreciated the skill of the great actress and was sensitive to her invaluable lessons, but he loved to dance with Alla Shelest; in the world of ballet she was called a great ballerina.

Natalia Dudinskaya was the wife of Sergeev, the first dancer of the Kirov Ballet. According to Nureyev, Sergeev did not like him. In any case, this is what he later wrote in his autobiography, which did not stop him from noting: “Both of them, Dudinskaya and Sergeev, were excellent dancers, but they were about fifty, and they had little chance of conquering the Parisian public.” They understood this and, in order not to take risks, prepared the young people for the tour.

Nureyev rehearsed Sergeev's and his own repertoire: Alberta in Giselle, Solora in La Bayadère, the title role in Don Quixote, the Blue Bird in The Sleeping Beauty, Andria in Taras Bulba. The amazing combination of lightness and strength, swiftness and refined style in his dance did not fit into the stereotype of a first-class dancer. Much was expected of him. The wonderful teacher Alexander Ivanovich Pushkin studied with him. Nureyev was his favorite student. Nureyev's zeal captivated Pushkin, as did his musicality. Before leaving for Paris, Rudolf practically lived with his teacher's family.

On May 11, 1961, the Kirov Ballet troupe flew to Paris, Nureyev never saw Alexander Ivanovich again, although he always remembered his cozy apartment in the courtyard of the Choreographic School. This was a home where he was loved.

Ten days later he first appeared on stage in Paris. Grand Opera: La Bayadère was on, Solor was his favorite part. His divine plasticity was immediately noted. “The Kirov Ballet has found its cosmonaut, his name is Rudolf Nureyev,” the newspapers wrote. Fans crowded around him. He became friends with Claire Mott and Attilio Labis - the "stars" of the French ballet instantly appreciated his rare gift - and especially with Clara Sainte, a ballet fan and one of the regulars backstage Grand Opera. It was she who was destined to play a special role in his fate. She was engaged to the son of the French Minister of Culture, Andre Malraux, and her connections in the highest spheres were immense. First of all, he took Klara to see his favorite ballet - “The Stone Flower” staged by Yuri Grigorovich; he himself was not involved in it. Grigorovich was not allowed into Paris, but Nureyev highly valued his talent as a choreographer.

He behaved freely, walked around the city, stayed late in restaurants on Saint-Michel, went alone to listen to Yehudi Menuhin (he played Bach at the Pleyel Hall) and did not take into account the rules within which Soviet dancers existed.

Rudolf Nureyev. Leningrad, 1950s.

Clara Saint was in trouble; Vincent Malraux, having gone to the South for several days, died in a car accident. This brought her even closer to the Russian dancer. Having many acquaintances in Paris, Clara Saint was essentially a lonely person: she fled from Chile and with all her being understood the condition of Nureyev, a strange, unsociable young man originally from Bashkiria, who found himself in the center of attention of the Parisian secular crowd. Everything that happened at Paris Le Bourget airport on that distant day, June 17, 1961, was best described by Nureyev himself in his Autobiography: “I made a decision because I had no other choice. And whatever the negative consequences of this step, I do not regret it.” Newspapers vying with each other on the front pages gave loud headlines: “Star” of ballet and drama at Le Bourget Airport,” “Leap to Freedom,” “A girl sees how the Russians are pursuing her friend.” This girl was Clara Saint, whom he called from the police station. She asked him not to come; Soviet agents were hanging around her house; they were easily recognizable by their identical raincoats and soft velor hats.

At first, Rudolph was placed in a house opposite the Luxembourg Gardens, in a Russian family. Friends visited him. Newspapers wrote that he "chose freedom" and detailed the events at the airport. If he had not been offered to fly to Moscow, nothing would have happened. They decided to punish him for behavior that was too free, from the point of view of those assigned to the artists. His things were packed and were in the luggage heading to London. The whole world now knows what came of it. It was necessary to start a new life.

Boris Lvov-Anokhin in his article “The Prodigal Son of Russian Ballet” writes: “Having remained in Paris, he entered a completely new world of freedom for himself, the world of dance, not limited by the framework of classicism and the political demands of so-called “socialist realism.” In fact, the “world of freedom” turned out to be surprisingly complex. Two detectives accompanied him everywhere. The daily routine was scheduled strictly minute by minute; they were afraid of actions from the Soviet secret services: class, rehearsals, lunch at a nearby restaurant and home.

The ballet troupe of the Marquis de Cuevas, which accepted him, instilled hope that he would dance whatever he wanted. But the situation in which he found himself only contributed to depression, Pushkin was not around, there were no classes to which he was accustomed, there was no familiar discipline that created the life of the body, without which it was impossible to become an ideal dance master. And he strived for this. Mediocrity and bad taste reigned here; there were few good dancers.

It turned out that he knew very little about Western life and Western ballet. It seemed to him that this world was magnificent, but now he was faced with reality: weak schools, handicraft performance. The young man became a skeptic. A six-month contract was immediately signed with the troupe of the Marquis de Cuevas. On June 23, six days after he stayed, he was already dancing the Blue Bird in The Sleeping Beauty. A month ago he danced it with the Kirov ballet troupe on the Paris stage Grand Opera. The next day he performed as the Prince in the same Sleeping Beauty. Nureyev's partner was Nina Vyrubova. It was a prologue to the future. He was becoming a citizen of the Western world, tearing himself away from what was behind. Here, in the troupe of the Marquis de Cuevas, everything was different.

There was no familiar atmosphere, no traditions that had previously made up his life. At times he was overcome by despair: had he made a mistake? The Soviet embassy sent him a telegram from his mother and two letters: one from his father, the other from Alexander Ivanovich Pushkin. Pushkin wrote to him that Paris is a decadent city, that if he remains in Europe, he will lose moral purity and, most importantly, the technical virtuosity of dance, that he must immediately return home, where no one can understand his actions. The father's letter was short: his son betrayed his homeland, and there is no justification for this. The mother’s telegram was even shorter: “Come home.”

Twenty-seven years will pass, and the world-famous Rudolf Nureyev will come to Ufa to say goodbye to his dying mother. Then, feeling it approaching own death, will go to Leningrad and dance “La Sylphide” on the stage of the Kirov Theater. It will be a new time, Leningrad will become St. Petersburg, the Kirov Theater will become the Mariinsky. The audience in the hall went crazy, but he could no longer dance, and the ovation belonged to the past, to his entire legendary life in the West, which began in that hot June 1961. In his Autobiography, Nureyev writes:

After the troubles in the troupe of the Marquis de Cuevas, I spent several days in the south of France and returned to hot, empty, beautiful Paris. In August I had to dance in Deauville, and before that life was uneventful. The only person I met during this time was the American photographer Richard Avedon, who left an indelible impression on himself. He invited me to his studio and took several portraits of me. When I saw them, I realized that I had found a true friend who felt my condition.

He danced in Deauville, in Biarritz on small stages in small theatres, flew to Frankfurt to perform on television and then went to Copenhagen to take lessons from Vera Volkova. In Frankfurt he was to dance Giselle and The Vision of a Rose in a program prepared by Swiss choreographer Vaslav Orlikowski, partner of Yvette Chauvire. At the studio they were convinced that he was familiar with the choreography of Fokine’s ballet, but he had never seen it.

The ballet, created by Fokine during the Russian Seasons at the Monte Carlo Theater in 1911, was seen in the Soviet Union only in 1964 during a tour of the Cuban National Ballet. Naturally, Nureyev found himself in a difficult position in the television studio. He was shown several photographs of Nijinsky and, with the help of friends who explained the order of movements, he danced “The Vision of a Rose.”

Vera Volkova previously lived in Russia, as a child she studied in the same class with Alexander Ivanovich Pushkin with Nikolai Gustavovich Legat (among his students were Fokin, Karsavina, Vaganova, Fyodor Lopukhov), and then studied with Vaganova. Rudolf needed Volkova, he suffered from dancing on small stages, he needed classes with those who knew the secrets of the Russian school of classical dance, and he asked the head of the Marquis de Cuevas troupe, Raimondo de Lorraine, to give him time off.

He was drawn to Copenhagen by his dream of meeting Erik Vroon, an outstanding dancer who captivated Russian audiences during a tour of the American Ballet Theater in 1960. Irina Kolpakova once admitted in a conversation that she had never seen such a perfect classical dancer as Eric Brun. Nureyev was captivated by him, his manner, his elegance, the classicism of his art, and his human qualities. Eric Brun was ten years older than Rudolf. Eric's photograph always stood on his desk. Even after the death of the famous Danish dancer, Nureyev never forgot him; he meant too much in his life.

During the American Ballet Theater's tour in Leningrad, Nureyev was in Germany, but he happened to watch a film with Brun's participation. Nureyev said that “Eric has reached the point where his body can be treated like musical instrument. He was distinguished by a rare purity of dance and was never satisfied with himself, always in search of new means of expression.” For Nureyev, he turned out to be a faithful friend and assistant, especially at the beginning of his journey in the West.

Rudolf Nureyev and Eric Bruhn in a dance class, 1960s.

Classes with Vera Volkova disappointed him; apparently, she studied with Vaganova when the famous teacher was just developing the vocabulary of her system. For Rudolf, this was already a passed stage. He greatly appreciated the art of Dudinskaya, Kolpakova, Vaganova’s last student, with her he danced “Giselle” and followed the lessons of his partners and teachers. By nature, Nureyev had a long stride, soft expressive movement and rare flexibility. Pushkin helped him develop his jump and strengthen his coordination of movements. “Pushkin was a wonderful teacher,” said Nureyev. “He was able to penetrate deeply into the character of each of his students. Sensing their characteristics, he created for them combinations of movements designed to arouse in them a passionate desire to work. He always tried to pull out of us everything that was good in us, never concentrated attention only on our shortcomings, did not deprive us of faith in ourselves, did not encroach on our individuality, did not try to break them, subjugate or remake them. He respected our individuality, and this gave us the opportunity to add our own colors to the dance, which reflected our inner life. In the end, it is the artist’s personality that makes classical ballet alive and interesting.” To be honest, the classes with Volkova were far from what he had already used in his dance. But meeting her was useful. She was a kind and sympathetic person, and Rudolf later remembered her very warmly. At first, he really needed attention to himself. Rosella Hightower, the Bulgarian Sonya Arova, who became a famous English ballerina, and Eric Brun, the king of male dance in the West, took care of him in those years. Brun studied with him for a long time.

Friendship with Vera Volkova led him to meet Margot Fonteyn, her student. One day in Volkova’s apartment there was a sound phone call, Margot Fonteyn asked Rudolph to answer the phone and invited him to come to London to perform on November 2, 1961 at the Royal Theater in a gala concert. Margot Fonteyn had been president of the Royal Academy of Dance for several years and, since 1958, had organized a gala concert once a year. She dreamed of inviting Ulanova, but Galina Sergeevna appeared on the Bolshoi Theater stage for the last time in Chopinian in December 1960 and flatly refused Fontaine’s offer. Now Fontaine decided to invite Nureyev. He was flattered. Of course, he wanted to dance with her, but she had obligations to her former partner, the English dancer Michael Soames, and it was decided that Nureyev would dance a solo, choreographed especially for him by Frederick Ashton, and a pas de deux from the third act of Swan Lake "with Rosella Hightower.

He flew to London. I stayed at the Panamanian embassy - Margot Fonteyn's husband was the Panamanian ambassador to England. “From the first second I realized that I had met a friend. It was the brightest moment in my life from the day I found myself in the West,” he later wrote. London made a strong impression on him. He arrived under the false name of Roman Jasmine, fleeing the press. At the Royal Ballet School he introduced himself as a Polish dancer, but was quickly recognized. A reception was given in his honor at the Panamanian embassy. He seemed reserved, self-confident and quite charming. He looked like a boy, and he was 23 years old. The performance in London became a sensation. This was the beginning of his brilliant career. “The whole of London” was in the hall, all the experts. Frederick Ashton choreographed a solo for him to Scriabin's music. Nureyev impressed with his energy and sensuality. Scriabin was a greater success than the pas de deux from Swan Lake.

Margot Fonteyn was forty-two years old at this time. She once announced that she would leave the stage at thirty, but over the years this was forgotten. Now she was alarmed by her partner's problem. Michael Some left the stage, David Blair, whom she chose, was 29 years old. She was going to dance Giselle with him in February 1962. After consulting with her husband, she decided to offer Albert Nureyev’s role. Rudolph happily accepted this offer. The performance was supposed to take place on February 21.

Before this significant event, Rudolf needed to fulfill the obligations under the contract he signed with the troupe of the Marquis de Cuevas. He still danced in Cannes, went on tour to Israel, which reminded him, as he wrote in his Autobiography, of “southern Ukraine, it was warm and there were Russians everywhere, many of whom had arrived quite recently.” Then, in 1961, it was still difficult to imagine that emigration would take on a huge scale. He danced two, sometimes three times a week. The repertoire was small: The Sleeping Beauty and the third act of Swan Lake. He was annoyed that he had to dance in cabaret theaters located in the nightclub area. Israel was replaced by Germany. He danced in Hamburg, taking the time to go to Munich to see Erik Vroon dance the Prince for the first time in Swan Lake. He himself, while on tour in Germany, met on stage with the famous French ballerina Yvette Chauvire. They danced "Giselle". He remembered her from Russia; her “Dying Swan” was unforgettable.

Everything turned out so well that he had to dance with ballerinas much older than himself. Shovira was forty-three years old, Fontaine was forty-two, however, he was no stranger to it; he danced “Laurencia” with Dudinskaya when he was nineteen years old and she was forty-nine.

After “Giselle” with Chauvire, he went on tour to Italy: Turin, Genoa, Bologna. It was winter, it was cold and uncomfortable in Northern Italy, and he wanted to quickly leave the troupe of the Marquis de Cuevas. In Venice he performed with her for the last time. The city was dazzlingly beautiful, but covered in snow. He lived in a fairly average hotel, where there was no heating, and he had to sleep in clothes. The future seemed uncertain. Freed from his obligations, he became free. Friends formed a “union of four”: Eric Brun, Sonya Arova, Rosella Hightower and Rudolf Nureyev. The concert group rehearsed in England and began dancing in Cannes. Then we moved to Paris, and then Eric Brun injured his leg during a performance, and he had to fly to New York and dance the pas de deux from Bournonville's ballet "Flower Festival of Cinzano" with Maria Tachiff on television. Nureyev replaced him. He immediately learned the game and flew to the USA for the first time in his life. The journey from Ufa to New York, in fact, turned out to be quite short, less than six months had passed since he remained in the West, and so many countries and people had already changed. It was as if he was destined to be always on the go.

In New York he was introduced to Balanchine. In Russia, Nureyev saw his “Apollo” and “Theme and Variations,” which were brought by Alicia Alonso’s troupe. In Paris, he saw “Symphony in C Major” to the music of Wiese and “Night Shadow” to the music of Bellini. The performances made a strong impression on him, and now in New York he saw Agon and the early Apollo Musagete. He was at the mercy of Balanchine's art, he was amazed by the structure: the soloists alone with the empty stage space. No spectacular or decorative row. “Strict discipline of emotions” (expression by V. Gaevsky). Nureyev immediately felt that the choreographer was very confident in his ideas.

During his short visit to New York, he also met Jerome Robins, whose “Cage” to the music of Stravinsky and “New York Export Opus Jazz” touched him very much with its expression. He fell in love with New York, which seemed quiet and cozy to him. Skyscrapers and green neighborhoods nearby, quiet streets in lower Manhattan, gardens, squares, friendliness. He was sure that he would return here. He never wanted his life to flow along a once and for all established channel; the need to try, explore, search was strongly developed in him. He wanted to touch everything with his own hands; from childhood he wanted to determine his own path.

Then, in February 1962, the main performance was “Giselle”, which he had to dance with Margot Fonteyn. American critic Clive Warne in his book “Nureyev” writes:

Fonteyn was never an absolute success in Giselle. When she was 17, she was fragile but lacked artistic maturity. Now that she was getting older, this part was not very clear in her usual repertoire. On that famous evening of February 21, she was unexpected: deeply feeling, enthusiastic, more meaningful. There was a feeling that her career could start again with her new Russian partner.

Everyone understood that something extraordinary was happening, that the audience was present at the birth of a new ballet couple, which is destined to become a milestone in the world of ballet. Nureyev was immediately invited to join the Royal Ballet, which no dancer was given unless he was a citizen of the British Empire. Ninette de Valois, the wisest director of the Royal Ballet, did everything to make the theater a home for the Russian dancer; unfortunately, she left this post in 1963. Nobility and lyrical restraint usually distinguished the dance of Margot Fonteyn. With Nureyev she experienced new feelings. She said: “When I dance with him, I don’t see Nureyev on stage, whom I know and with whom I communicate every day, I see a stage character, the character that Nureyev dances today.” All the feelings that were characteristic of Nureyev’s dance - gusts of sensuality, anger, despair, passion - contrasted sharply with Fonteyn’s manner, and her dance benefited from this. On the contrary, she instilled in him a taste and a desire for harmony. Their duet, known all over the world, breathed new energy into her, brought latent dormant forces to the surface, and gave him the opportunity to become the “first dancer” in the West. The “Iron Curtain” prevented the Western viewer from recognizing Chabukiani, Ermolaev, Messerer, Korny in the prime of their talent, now he became interested in Nureyev. Neither Vasiliev, who was essentially the “first dancer” of the Bolshoi Theater, nor Baryshnikov, who became the idol of America, had, when they danced, the fame that fell to Rudolf Nureyev. Today in any bookstore in the West you can see huge albums dedicated to Anna Pavlova, Vaslav Nijinsky, and Rudolf Nureyev. It all started in London in the winter of 1962.

The duet of Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev made both of them famous; after Swan Lake at the Vienna Opera in October 1964, they were called to the stage eighty-nine times. Stagehands had to pay extra wages because they could not dismantle the scenery and were delayed in the theater. Each one couldn't do it alone

would achieve what they achieved together. On stage, their duet was dynamite, exploding the auditorium. Anna Pavlova is a symbol of ballet, Caruso is a symbol of a tenor singer. Fontaine and Nureyev became "stars" in their own right, having achieved success through their work and talent, but, unlike their great predecessors, they were also the darlings of the "café world", the crowd of those rich enough to spend time in " social life" The press compared their names to those of Frank Sinatra and Brigitte Bardot.

But victories were not easy for Nureyev. Entering into a contract with Covent Garden, he secured the right to dance not only with the Royal Ballet troupe. In March 1962, he made his debut on the American stage. With Maria Tallchiff he danced in the USA for the first time on television, now he had to dance the pas de deux from the ballet “Don Quixote” on the stage of the Brooklyn Academy of Music with Sonya Arova. Great success did not have. Critics reacted very coolly to his performance. New York did not come without a struggle. The fact that he jumped over the barrier at the Paris airport is not yet a reason to capture the attention of the New York public, so the press wrote. But the curiosity about him was great, his whole behind-the-scenes life aroused insane interest. He becomes a regular guest on gossip columns, with someone calling him “the first pop star of the ballet world.” His love for the talent of Eric Brun acquired a scandalous hue. They were indeed very close in those years.

A boy from Ufa demonstrated to the Western world a dance style that was unusual for the West. Nureyev accepted ballet novelty with amazing ease, but strict classical dance was absolutely in his power.

The School of Russian Ballet, its achievements were obvious. Nature endowed Nureyev with a remarkable mind; very quickly he began to understand the laws of Western life. I knew who should be given an interview and when, and who shouldn’t be given one. Two years after he “chose freedom,” he had already gotten the hang of answering the questions magazines asked him in different ways. Time And Newsweek. Both wanted to publish long article-interviews about him. He understood that if he gave an interview to one magazine, the other would refuse, so he managed to attend two receptions on the same day, the day of the performance, meet with the press at both, and the so-called “burn covers” about him appeared simultaneously in two magazines with a circulation of five million each. The sensation was great. Nureyev's name was included in the zone mass consciousness, it no longer belonged only to the world of ballet. Clive Barnes, a famous American ballet critic, wrote that it is unlikely that anyone knows the art of communicating with the press better than Nureyev.

Scandals were also associated with him; as is known, they are an integral element of the concept denoted by the word “star”. In 1965, news spread throughout the Western world that at a reception in Spoleto, Nureyev threw a glass of wine and splashed it on a white wall. Some magazines wrote that it was not wine, but whiskey, the glass of which he threw on the floor in irritation, others described in detail how the wall was flooded. In fact, eyewitnesses said that Nureyev accidentally dropped his glass. Once, at a reception in the presence of the royal family in London, he danced solo, his shoes pinched him, he calmly kicked them off and continued dancing barefoot. No dancer could afford this. He could be very rude to conductors, partners, producers, himself supporting and emphasizing the rumors spread about his terrible character. But he worked like an ox, and no one in ballet could compare with his ability to work and professional discipline. He studied for hours in class, in the rehearsal hall, working tirelessly even after the performance.

Rudolf Nureyev at the Martini party, 1965

Nureyev died on January 6, 1993, France buried him. The funeral ceremony lasted one hour. Soloists Grand Opera They carried the coffin up the stairs and placed it on the upper platform. Nureyev lay in a coffin in an evening suit and a turban. During the civil funeral service in the building Grand Opera they played Bach, Tchaikovsky, the artists read Pushkin, Byron, Goethe, Rimbaud, Michelangelo in five languages ​​- such was his dying will. Pierre Berger, the French multimillionaire and owner of the Yves Saint Laurent company, who was briefly director of the Paris Opera, delivered his farewell words. Rudolf Nureyev was buried near Paris, in the Russian cemetery of Saint-Genevieve des Bois. I lived in the West for thirty-two years. Over the years, he has been unconditionally recognized by the world, ballet, theater, and the masses. His fame, unique in its kind, eclipsing other names, after his death turned his life into a legend.

When he stayed at Le Bourget airport in 1961, he was still far from maturity. Over the years he became a ballet director, choreographer, ballet director Opera Gamer. His career was on the rise. When they write that he came to the West to seek his destiny, they only distort reality. An incident that happened to him at the stupid will of those who stood behind the Kirov Ballet pushed him to what he unconsciously strived for - improvement. Already a famous dancer, he spent a lot of money on mastery lessons and studied either with Valentina Pereyaslavets or with Stanley Williams in New York. He managed to be acquainted with all the celebrities, members of royal houses, to be known as a bon vivant, a nightclub lover, a gambler, a sybarite, and at the same time, without missing a day, he stood at the machine, perfecting what gave on stage a feeling of incomparable artistic freedom. He had a strange eating regime: he loved steak and sweet tea with lemon and ate more like an athlete than a gourmet. There were much more rumors about him than knowledge of his true life. He had few friends, but those who did have his confidence, although by nature he was a distrustful person. They said that he was capricious, and little thought was given to how he mercilessly wastes himself. Leopold Stokowski and Jean Marais, Maurice Chevalier and Maria Callas were fond of him; it was impossible to attend performances with his participation, but he still worked, paying tribute to “high life,” because he was not interested in anything except dance.

Rudolf Nureyev and Margot Fonteyn.

Francoise Sagan, in her short essay about Nureyev, wrote that his home was a stage and an airplane, that he was a sad, lonely man who gradually lost the few friends he had.

November 27, 1963 at Covent Garden in London he danced “La Bayadère”, not in its entirety, but only the third act – “Shadows”. Choreography by Petipa, in his own edition. Solor is his best game. Furious temperament and decorative imposingness, pride and touches of oriental melancholy - everything came together in this role. Triumph in Covent Garden paved the next stage in his brilliant career. He performed in this performance not only as a dancer, he was its tutor and director.

The legend picked up the pace. Now he needed to test himself on other stages before performing in London and Paris. He flew to Vienna, Australia, danced there with his troupe, and then performed at famous venues. If Balanchine staged “Raymonda” or “Swan Lake,” then the program said: “Balanchine’s production.” When Nureyev staged Petipa’s ballets, the program read: “Petipa, Nureyev’s edition.”

With all the respect Nureyev had for Balanchine, the question of joining Balanchine’s troupe or participating in his performances as a guest performer never even arose. Only in 1979 did Balanchine stage a ballet especially for him - “The Bourgeois in the Nobility” to the music of Richard Strauss. In Paris and London, Nureyev included in his repertoire “The Prodigal Son”, “Agon” and “Apollo” staged by Balanchine. In the West today they like to compare Balanchine and Nureyev. Both graduated from the same choreographic school, both danced on the stage of the Mariinsky Theater, both ended up in the West. There is only one difference: Balanchine was a great choreographer and a rather weak dancer. Nureyev was a great dancer and a rather weak choreographer. He made his first attempt to prove himself as a choreographer in 1966 in Vienna, staging the ballet “Tancred” to the music of Hans Werner Henze. Critics wrote about “pretentious symbolism,” although some independent ideas were palpable in it. Ten years later, Nureyev staged his own version of Romeo and Juliet to music by Prokofiev, and in 1979, Manfred. But, as often happens, his desire to become a choreographer did not have the same success as his performances as a dancer. Two different professions, which is difficult for great ballet masters to admit, who do not know what to do with themselves when their short dance life ends.

Nureyev was an outstanding classical dancer, the incomparable Siegfried in Swan Lake and Albert in Giselle, but the intriguing novelty of modern ballet attracted him. He himself admitted: “It was difficult for me to master the principles of modern dance. Classical parts are the most difficult; you always have to think about tradition, about how they were danced before you. But modern dance does not have such firm canons, they have not yet been defined, and in this sense it is easier for the performer.”

He arrived in America just as modern ballet began to penetrate the repertoire of classical ballet companies. Paul Taylor, for example, staged Halo to Handel's music for the Royal Danish Ballet in 1968, something that would have been absolutely impossible in the early 60s. Halo is the first American modern ballet, which Nureyev danced with Paul Taylor's company in Mexico and London. Glen Tetley staged “Tristan” and “Labyrinth” to music by Berio especially for Nureyev. “Pierrot Lunaire” - Tetley’s famous ballet to the music of Schoenberg - Nureyev always danced with great success. He learned José Limón's "The Moor's Pavane" and studied with Martha Graham. I took lessons from her and repeated every movement like a student. Martha Graham choreographed “Lucifer” especially for him (Margot Fonteyn danced with him) and “Letters to Scarlett,” which he danced without her. Martha Graham said about him: “Nureyev feels everything so subtly, embodies it so accurately that, looking at him, it seems to me as if I were dancing myself. He is a brilliant dancer, but there is something else in him besides this - only his inherent individuality. That’s why no one can repeat any of his roles.”

With Martha Graham's troupe he danced the ballets Night Journey, Clytemnestra, and Equatorial. There was a period when he became addicted to dancing modern ballet. Murray Louis staged three ballets for him and for him: “The Moment”, “Vivache” and “Venus of the Canaries”. The more he grew up, the more he wanted to dance. His dream was to dance six to seven times a week; he was ready to lead “full-length” ballets, and not just dance one-act ones, which is very common in the West. His manager Serge Gorlinsky organized tours with the Australian Ballet, the National Ballet of Canada, and the London Ballet Festival, and Nureyev danced almost every evening with different partners. From the outside it looked like a “star” on tour surrounded by a troupe supporting the celebrity’s dance. All this gave rise to countless rumors. But he couldn't help but dance.

Gorlinsky sometimes organized “Nureyev and Friends” evenings; the programs were varied; Nureyev showed them in London, Washington, New York, and Paris. Very few dancers in this world are able to attract crowds of spectators. Clive Warne in his book “Nureyev” writes: “The name of Maya Plisetskaya ensures sold-out crowds in Paris and New York, but in London she is not considered a “big star.” During these years, Nureyev was at the peak of his popularity not only in New York, but in all cities of the world. Every summer since 1976, Nureyev danced in a huge hall Coliseum Theater in London for a few weeks. It was impossible to get tickets."

His thirst to dance was boundless, many wondered: why? Not a single dancer in the world danced as much as he did, the meaning of his life was dance, the stage was his home. He earned astronomical money, became very rich, apartments in Paris, New York, Monte Carlo, an island in the Mediterranean Sea, collections of paintings, porcelain, sculptures. Everything was earned with my feet. Of course, one can assume that, like all people who were born in poverty and spent their youth in poverty, he sought, as it were, to compensate for what did not exist. But it was not wealth that attracted him to the stage, it was not wealth that made him dance every evening. His movement was fraught with beauty and mystery, his temperament was exciting, his dance worked visible miracles, and the world applauded him. Nureyev knew that the dancer's life was too short, and he rushed Time. Life was interesting for him when he danced. This was the solution to his riddle. He was a truly romantic dancer, trained in Leningrad, in the Kirov Ballet, where after graduating from college he immediately became a soloist and took a leading position in the theater.

The time when he came on stage gave the world Vladimir Vasiliev, Yuri Solovyov, Eric Brun, Peter Martins, Edward Villela Jorge Donna, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Anthony Dowell. But Nureyev is sharply different from them. And it was not by chance that he became a legend of ballet, its myth, in the second half of the 20th century.

He was born in a train carriage that traveled along Lake Baikal on March 17, 1938. His father was a Tatar. He looked like a Tatar, oriental blood fueled his temperament. As a child, no one was involved in his upbringing, he was impolite and did not understand the subtleties of behavior. He had three sisters. In his youth, he was friends with his sister Rosa, in the late 1980s she came to him in Paris, he gave her his villa in Monte Carlo, then they quarreled. After his death, she sued the foundation named after him for his inheritance. An ordinary, trivial story. His first teacher in Ufa, where he lived as a child, was Anna Ivanovna Udaltsova. At seventeen he came to Leningrad. The director of the Choreographic School did not like him, but he ended up in Pushkin’s class and quickly began to master the skill of classical dance. In Leningrad he became famous. Admirers flocked to his performances. The future was his. He had no intentions of leaving for the West. Of course, he wanted to see the world, was glad to go to Egypt with the Kirov Ballet and perceived Paris as a gift of fate. Stupid policies, blurred by communist ideology and the mediocrity of those who implemented them, provoked what happened at Le Bourget airport. He did not forget Russia. His “Autobiography,” written or spoken by him in 1962 (it was published in England), is full of love for Leningrad. At the end of his life, already very sick and approaching death, he came to his homeland. I was in Ufa, in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg), danced on the stage of the Mariinsky Theater, and came more than once. Shortly before his end, he stood at the conductor's stand in Kazan, was passing through Moscow, but went to Paris to die. I didn’t want to return to Russia, I was in my thirties extra years life in the West made him a “man of the world.” Although Russia always attracted him, and he always remembered the nature of his success: traditions and the Russian school.

Rudolf Nureyev and Mikhail Baryshnikov.

Even in the years when every trip abroad was an event, the prima ballerina of the Azerbaijani ballet, in those years its artistic director Gamer Almas-zade, told how, having arrived with the Baku Ballet troupe in Monte Carlo, she immediately met Nureyev, who had specially come to see their performances and see her. They knew each other from Leningrad; he, one of the few, knew that Gamar Almas-zade was Tatar by origin.

He met with Vasiliev, Maksimova, Plisetskaya, Grigorovich; the choreographer’s personal archive contains a lot rare photographs Nureyev during their meetings in the West in those years when this was strictly prohibited. Nureyev was a difficult man, nervous, capricious; his partners had a hard time with him, and he had a hard time with them. He quickly forgot his grievances, but they did not. Although those who knew him closely claim that he was a very shy person. It’s just that he was always at the mercy of creative impulses, and at that moment he was inaccessible to everyday life, and when he was pestered, he became irritable and rude.

The years of his partnership with Margot Fonteyn are the zenith of his career. His dance was full of psychological details. He danced Princes as people with a romantic imagination. Only Galina Ulanova could dance the female parts in ballet; he always admired her, and wherever she stayed when she came to the West, there were always flowers sent by him in her hotel room. Even in those years when it was strictly forbidden to communicate with him, he found an opportunity to let Ulanova know that the flowers were from him.

“Raymonda”, “Sleeping Beauty”, “Swan Lake”, “La Bayadère” - a celebration of classical dance when Nureyev danced. He constantly created his own versions, found new interpretations, the Kirov ballet did not let him go, it remained in his memory. Dance was above all else for him.

In his personal life, he was often tired, irritated and lonely, although some young people, old ladies, and countless admirers always crowded around him. English language he learned and spoke relatively fluently, but with a strong Russian accent. He also had strong friendships with people, he valued them, but after the death of Margot Fonteyn, and especially Eric Brun, only the stage awakened him. The years were catching up. In 1982, he was already forty-four years old, and rumors spread that he had become worse at dancing. But the magic remained. In the West they don’t teach ballet dancers acting skills; Nureyev was familiar with Stanislavsky’s school. As a person gifted with genius, he gradually moved to roles in which it was important acting. He loved to study. Eric Brun was a famous performer of Bournonville’s choreography, he was magnificent in the ballet “A Folk Tale”, he performed in a role in which there was no dancing, but he amazed with the precision of gestures, a manner that created the image of a certain folk hero, which embodied the spirit of Andersen's fairy tales. When Nureyev danced La Sylphide in New York with the National Ballet of Canada, critics noted the influence of Eric Brun, although Nureyev was too temperamental for Bournonville's choreography, it was not his choreographer. But the romanticism of the party persisted. He danced La Sylphide in 1973. Now, nine years later, he tried to appear on stage in roles where he could demonstrate artistic skill.

Carla Fracci and Rudolf Nureyev in the ballet “The Nutcracker”, La Scala, 1970-71.

Behind me was a huge life on the ballet stage. Why didn't he dance? "Antigone" staged by John Cranko, MacMillan's ballet "Entertainments" to the music of Britten, "Symphonic Variations" and "Marguerite and Armand" - ballets by Frederick Ashton. Liszt's music, on which Ashton set Marguerite and Armand, inspired Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev; the parts were woven from acute, confused feelings and fabulous beauty of duets. The costumes for this ballet and the set design were done by Cecil Beaton. Not a single performance that Nureyev danced with Margot Fonteyn was as successful as this romantic ballet. The dancer spent a lot of effort on “The Bourgeois in the Nobility.” The ballet was staged by Balanchine to the music of Richard Strauss, but during rehearsals Balanchine fell ill, and Nureyev continued to work with Jerome Robbins. Then Balanchine returned to work and completed the ballet himself, which had always interested him. In 1932, he created the first version with Tamara Tumanova and David Lishin in the René Blum troupe in Monte Carlo, based on a libretto by Boris Kokhno. In 1944, Balanchine again staged “The Tradesman in the Nobility” in the USA, and now, in 1979, based on the old libretto by Kokhno, he staged it for Nureyev. The premiere took place on April 8 with Patricia McBride.

Nureyev worked with Bejart, Roland Petit. He danced Bejart's duet “Songs of a Wanderer” to the music of Mahler in Brussels in 1971 with the famous Italian. Nureyev embodied the seeking spirit, one was in white, the other in black tights. During the same period, Nureyev danced “The Rite of Spring” with Bejart. They were friends with Roland Petit, quarreled, and worked. Petya's wife Zizi Jeanmer, a famous ballerina who had already finished dancing, was a friend of Nureyev. From the memoirs of Roland Petit:

Spring 1989. Dinner at Nureyev's after the performance of a scene from Notre Dame at the Grand Opera. The wax from the candles on the Russian copper chandelier falls drop by drop into the plates and hardens like pearls on the oysters we eat. A political conversation about the career of the dancer Rasputin and whether it is possible to retain the position of director of Opera Gamier. I advise him not to remain between two stools, between the Opera and Broadway. The atmosphere is warm and friendly. We are surrounded by paintings of all sizes, from all eras, depicting Neptunes, Icaruses, and other mythological heroes, naked and exciting. When lunch comes to an end, we blow out the remaining candles and go into the living room to drink coffee with herbal infusions. Rudolph dresses in an oriental peignoir, takes off his shoes, and while the guests do not dare to talk about anything else except the owner of the house, he, stretched out on the sofa in a languid pose, massages his feet, at the same time dialing telephone numbers from all four parts of the world, to find out about the status of your affairs. The 1980s were mainly given to the Parisian Grand Opera.

Becoming a leader Opera Gamer, he raised the level of the troupe, created a first-class corps de ballet, staged many performances, prestige Opera Gamer under Nureyev it became very large. Naturally, they called him a dictator, a tyrant, and did not forgive him for his harsh behavior. Sylvia Guillem left the troupe and went to work in London. It was later, after Nureyev’s death, that she would say that working with him was best time her life, and that she highly appreciates his gift as a leader. Scandals flared around him. But he staged his last performance on stage Opera Gamer. It was his favorite “La Bayadère”. To be precise, the performance was practically staged by Ninel Kurgapkina, who once danced with him in Leningrad in Don Quixote and now came from Russia at his request to work on the performance. Sometimes he came to rehearsals, or rather, he was brought on a stretcher. At the premiere he was supported by two dancers. He could hardly walk anymore. The stage was buried in flowers, and he looked at the raging auditorium, half-lidding his eyes.

A year before his death, he tried to change his profession. Karajan once advised him to stand at the conductor's stand. His natural musicality was extraordinary. He began to study, he received a lot of help from Vladimir Weiss, who worked at the Bolshoi Theater, and then, on Nureyev’s recommendation, in Australia. Nureyev quickly learned the laws of his new profession. He conducted in Vienna, Athens, and flew to Kazan in March 1992 and was very pleased with the concert. On May 6, 1992, he stood at the controls in Metropolitan Opera, conducted the ballet Romeo and Juliet. I was very worried. He danced here many times. In 1980, with the Berlin Ballet troupe, he had enormous success in “The Nutcracker” and at the same time showed his Prince Myshkin in “The Idiot” after Dostoevsky, the ballet was staged by Valery Panov. Now he conducted Romeo and Juliet, the most significant version of this ballet was created by him for the first time in London in 1977, and then in Milan, in La Scala in 1981. In 1983 he became the head Opera Gamer, According to his passport, he was a citizen of Austria. Now that was over too. He conducted and understood that there were friends and admirers in the audience, it was a great success, and the next day Anna Kisselgoff, a regular ballet columnist for the most influential newspaper The New York Times, published a review, finding kind words, from which it was clear that his conducting was not an event. At the end of May 1992, he once again flew to Vienna and conducted a concert consisting of arias by Mozart and Rossini.

A terrible disease, it is called the plague of the 20th century, was taking its toll. There was no more strength. On the eve of his fortieth birthday - he was still dancing - he admitted: “I understand that I’m getting old, you can’t get away from it. I think about it all the time, I hear the clock ticking my time on stage, and I often say to myself: you only have a little time left...” Now he no longer danced. He no longer conducted. He was dying. Everyone knew he was sick. Lately he lived only by the support of the public, ready to applaud him as soon as he appeared on stage, no matter what he did. From the memoirs of Roland Petit:

Still, I advise him to conserve his strength. “I myself wanted my life to turn out this way,” he answers. Looking very deeply into his eyes, I try to ask him a provocative question: “But you will die on stage?” “And I would like this most of all,” he answers, squeezing my hand. Voice<…>breaks mid-sentence, and I clench my fingers so as not to show all the sadness that covers me.

NURIEV RUDOLF NURIEV RUDOLF (ballet dancer; died on November 20, 1992 at the age of 54). Nureyev died from the plague of the twentieth century - AIDS. The disease was discovered in the great dancer at the end of 1984. Nuriev himself came to see the young Parisian doctor Michel Canesi, with whom he

NURIEV Rudolf NURIEV Rudolf (ballet dancer; died on November 20, 1992 at the age of 54). Nureyev died from the plague of the twentieth century - AIDS. The disease was discovered in the great dancer at the end of 1984. Nuriev himself came to see the young Parisian doctor Michel Canesi, with whom he

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Rudolf Nureyev is a legend of Russian and world ballet, the most outstanding dancer of the last century.

Childhood

Rudolf Nuriev was born on March 17, 1938 in the family of Farida and Khamet Nuriev. His father was a political commissar in the Red Army. In all biographies, the birthplace of the future stage star is recorded in Irkutsk, and the actual place of his birth is the train in which the pregnant Farida was traveling after her husband to Vladivostok. Hamet was very happy about the birth of his son and named him Rudolf. Before this, three girls were born in the family - Rosa, Rozida and Lydia.

The family lived in Vladivostok for a year and a half, until the father was transferred to a new duty station, in Moscow. Here they settle in a small wooden house, live like everyone else, not richly. Life is gradually getting better, but all the plans and ideas failed to come true - the war began. The father goes to the front in the front row. The family remained in Moscow, but was soon evacuated along with other military families. They ended up in Chelyabinsk, and then ended up in the village of Shchuchye, not far from Ufa. Rudolph remembers the war years with difficulty; nothing remains in his memory except cold, hunger and constant darkness. The boy was nervous and often cried, probably because he had to fight for food and survive in terrible conditions.

When he was 5 years old, he saw ballet for the first time. It was "Crane Song". Little Rudolph firmly decides to dance. Farida did not hesitate for a long time and allowed her son to study in the dance club of the kindergarten. The boy studied with great enthusiasm; the wounded soldiers really liked the performance of their circle. At the sight of the little dancing boy, everyone was delighted and amazed at his enormous talent.

Youth years

After the Victory in 1945, the father returns, but the children have forgotten how to see in him loved one. They got a room in a communal apartment, which was warm and bright, and life gradually began to improve. The father did not like his son’s occupation; in the future he saw him as an engineer.

When the boy was 10 years old, he began to study in the dance club of the Pioneer House. His first teacher was A.I. Udaltsova, she immediately recognized the talent in the child and advised him to continue his dance studies in Leningrad.

Photo: Rudolf Nureyev

In 1955, a young man receives an unexpected gift from fate. The Bashkortostan Art Festival has opened in Moscow. His dance troupe was supposed to perform the ballet “The Song of the Crane,” but the soloist suddenly fell ill. And young Rudolf offers his services, even though he doesn’t know the party at all. His candidacy is approved, but the guy has to learn the entire game in a short time. He was able to do this, but his health was compromised. There was no time to recover, a young dancer with an injury goes on stage and conquers the audience. It was at this moment that it became clear to his teachers that a “fierce Tatar” had appeared in Russian ballet.

After this fateful performance, Rudolf decided to enter the capital's choreography studio, but they did not provide hostel accommodation for nonresidents. So he ends up in Leningrad and in 1955 he enters the Leningrad Choreographic School. He did not know that children begin to study at the age of 12 and his classmates have gone far ahead in terms of mastery. They make fun of him, he finds it difficult to get along with other students. Further residence in the hostel becomes impossible. He is saved by his mentor, A. Pushkin, who offered to live with his family.

In 1958, Rudolf graduated from the choreography school and became a member of the troupe of the Kirov Opera and Ballet Theater in Leningrad. The prima ballerina of this theater N. Dudinskaya insisted on this invitation.

Life in ballet

The artist’s first professional performance took place immediately after graduation. He took part in a competition held in Moscow. His partner was A. Sizova. The duo's performance was brilliant, the commission was delighted with the solo part young talent. He was distinguished by his extraordinary style of dancing; no one had ever seen such a technique before. The ballet "Laurencia" brought them gold in this competition, but Rudolf refused to accept the award. Upon returning to Leningrad, he dances “Gayane”, but with another partner - N. Kurgapkina. After that there was “Sleeping Beauty”, “Swan Lake”. The Mariinsky Theater was literally boiling, and Nuriev was at the epicenter of this boiling.

He receives a gold medal, having conquered the World Festival of Youth and Students, which was held in Vienna, with his dance. After three years of work in the theater, Rudolf takes an important place in the troupe and becomes the hope of the entire theater. Then there were triumphant performances in Bulgaria, East Germany, and Egypt. After this, Nureyev easily receives a visa to travel to France. And the dancer went to conquer the Paris Opera. But he managed to perform in France only a few times; by order of the KGB, he was removed from the repertoire of performances and had to be sent home to the Soviet Union.

The official version of the reason for this decision is a violation of the regime while staying abroad. But most likely the reason was the artist’s unconventional orientation. Rudolf did not comply, asked for political asylum in France and never returned to the Soviet Union, where prison awaited him. Quite a long time passed, and Rudolf was allowed to enter the Union, but it was short-term. The dancer was only able to come for 3 days to bury his mother.

Rudolf Nureyev becomes a member of the Marquis de Cuevas Ballet troupe, but after 6 months he is forced to leave France - they refused to grant him political asylum. The talented dancer was happily accepted in the UK; he settled in London and performed a duet with the famous ballerina Margot Fonteyn. Their acquaintance occurred in 1961, when Margot was 40 years old and was about to leave the stage. She stayed, and the duo existed for 15 long years. Their parts in Giselle were applauded by the English and American public. Their friendship lasted a lifetime, and ended only after Margot's death.

Rudolf Nureyev performed in different countries, worked a lot and fruitfully. In the 60s he had up to two hundred concerts a year, after 1975 he began to give 300 concerts, i.e. worked almost every day.

Dancer character

Undoubtedly, Rudolf was talented and selfless on stage, but in Everyday life he was not very well liked. He was arrogant and arrogant. The boy's childhood was not easy, this also left an imprint on his fate.

Feeling his superiority over others, he became uncontrollable - he was rude to his partners, ignored the rules of behavior in the team and violated discipline. He could tell a colleague that she was untalented, and sharply, without choosing any expressions.

Having become more mature and having risen to an unattainable height, with his sky-high fees, he did not pay the bill in a restaurant, became hysterical in the theater, and annoyed everyone with his wild antics. The audience was ready to carry their idol in their arms, but those who were closely acquainted with him considered him a disgusting rude man.

Acting and conducting career

His first film role was back in the USSR. The film “Soulful Flight”, which was filmed specifically for the All-Union Review of Choreography Schools. Then there were other roles in various ballet films. But there are also real roles in feature films - the biographical drama “Valentino” and in the film “In Plain Sight” together with the young N. Kinski.

Rudolph also tried himself as a choreographer, staging classical performances in his own version. His production also included the ballets “Tancredi” and “Manfred,” which were particularly original.

During the leadership of the Grand Opera troupe in Paris, he tries to give scope to young artists, promoting them to the best roles, and in defiance of the current hierarchy of already famous soloists and approx. World practice has never known this before.

At the end of his life he had to forget about dancing, but parting with the theater was like death and Rudolf became an orchestra conductor. He was even invited to post-Soviet Russia as a conductor when it was necessary to conduct the ballets “The Nutcracker” and “Romeo and Juliet” in Kazan.

Personal life

In Rudolf’s personal life there were exclusively men - the famous dancer did not hide his homosexuality. Although, according to the testimony of some of his acquaintances, in his youth he started romantic relationships with girls.

At different periods of his life, no less famous personalities were next to the great actor. He is credited with having an affair with musician Freddie Mercury, fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent, and singer Elton John. But the love of his life can be called the Danish dancer Erik Brun. Their relationship existed for a long time - twenty-five years, until Eric died in 1986. Their relationship was not easy; the temperaments of the Russian and the Dane were too different.

Death

According to the official version, Rudolf Nureyev died of heart disease, but everyone knows that such a conclusion is far from the truth. In 1983, a blood test on Rudolph revealed the presence of the immunodeficiency virus, which has been called the plague of the 20th century. The disease progressed, because the dancer refused to admit that he had AIDS, did not undergo any examinations and did not take medications. Ten years after the diagnosis was confirmed, the great dancer passed away. This happened on January 6, 1993 in a Paris clinic. His dying wish was fulfilled exactly - the Russian cemetery of Sainte-Genevieve-des-Bois became the burial place, and a bright Persian carpet was placed on top of the grave.

The work of Rudolf Nureyev is very highly valued in his homeland, even though he left it at one time. The Bashkir College of Choreography, a street in the city of Ufa, bears his name, and a museum has been created. Every year a classical dance festival dedicated to Rudolf Nureyev is held in Kazan.

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Rudolf Khametovich Nureyev (Rudolf Khamitovich Nureyev; Tat. Rudolf Khamit uly Nureyev). Born on March 17, 1938 near Irkutsk - died on January 6, 1993 in Paris. Soviet, British and French ballet dancer and choreographer. One of the most famous dancers of the 20th century.

Rudolf Nureyev was born between Irkutsk and Slyudyanka - on a train that was heading to Vladivostok.

Tatar by nationality.

Father - Khamit Fazleevich Nureyev (1903-1985), originally from the village of Asanovo, Sharipovsky volost, Ufa district, Ufa province (now Ufa district of the Republic of Bashkortostan). Having reached adulthood, he takes the first part of his father’s name Nur (ray, light) as his surname, and retains his surname as a patronymic and becomes Khamet Fazlievich Nuriev. Since 1922, he worked at the Milovka state farm, from where he was drafted into the Red Army in 1925, ended up in Kazan, where he served as a Red Army soldier in the United Tatar-Bashkir military school" At the end of his service, Nureyev Sr. remained in Kazan and in October 1927 entered a two-year course “Implementation of the Tatar language” at the Tatar Central Executive Committee, which he graduated in 1929 with a degree in accounting. In 1928 he joined the party.

Mother - Farida Agliullovna Nureyeva (Agliullova) (1907-1987), born in the village of Tatarskoye Tyugulbaevo, Kuznechikha volost, Kazan province (now Alkeevsky district of the Republic of Tatarstan).

Nuriev himself wrote in his autobiography that “on both sides our relatives are Tatars and Bashkirs.”

Soon after Rudolf's birth, his father is assigned to Moscow. With the beginning of the war, my father, with the rank of senior political instructor, went to the front in an artillery unit. He went through the entire war, from participating in the defense of Moscow to Berlin. In April 1945, he participated in the crossing of the Oder River, for which he received gratitude from the command.

In 1941, Rudolf and his mother were evacuated to the Bashkir Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic.

As a child, he had to experience real poverty, which, however, forced him to achieve a comfortable existence with extreme persistence. He began dancing in a children's folklore ensemble in Ufa, and studied at the House of Culture with the St. Petersburg ballerina Anna Udaltsova, who was in exile there.

In 1955, despite the large age gap, he was admitted to the Leningrad Choreographic School and studied in the class of Alexander Pushkin. He lived at home with his teacher, since he could not get along at the boarding school - other students teased and called him names, considered him a hillbilly.

Contemporaries argued that when Rudolph mastered various movements at the Vaganova School, it was clear that the guy had significant problems with technology. Moreover, Nureyev himself saw this, and it drove him crazy. He did not hesitate to show his rage in public and often ran away from the hall with tears in his eyes during rehearsals. But when everyone left, he returned and persistently practiced various steps alone until he achieved perfection. This is how the dancer was formed, about whom the great woman would later say: “Before Nureyev, they danced differently.” After all, men have traditionally played a secondary role in ballet, emphasizing the importance and professionalism of the fair sex. But Nureyev’s dance was so bright that it was simply impossible not to pay attention to it.

After graduating in 1958, thanks to prima ballerina Natalia Dudinskaya, he remained in Leningrad and was accepted into the Opera and Ballet Theater named after S.M. Kirov. He made his stage debut as Dudinskaya's partner in the ballet Laurencia, performing the role of Frondoso.

Flight of Rudolf Nureyev to the West

On June 16, 1961, while on tour in Paris, by decision of the KGB of the USSR, “for violating the regime of being abroad,” he was removed from further tours of the Kirov Theater troupe in London, but refused to return to the USSR, becoming a “defector” - the first among Soviet artists. In connection with this, he was convicted in the USSR of treason and sentenced in absentia to 7 years in prison.

Rudolph's first performances in the West took place in Paris, at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées - he performed the role of the Blue Bird in the ballet "The Sleeping Beauty" in the troupe of the Marquis de Cuevas and was immediately a huge success. The French communists set themselves the goal of booing the artist - but not knowing ballet (Nureyev’s pas de deux was almost at the end of the performance), they made noise at almost every performance of other artists, thereby only heating up the atmosphere of the evening. On July 29, at the closing of the troupe's last Paris season, Nureyev performed the main role in this performance, dancing in one act each with the troupe's prima ballerinas Nina Vyrubova, Rosella Hightower and Lian Deide.

France refused to grant Nureyev political refugee status, so the artist moved to Denmark, where he danced with the Royal Copenhagen Ballet. On November 2, 1961, he made his debut in London, performing the pas de deux from Swan Lake with Rosella Hightower - soon after which he received an engagement with the Royal Ballet of Great Britain. For more than fifteen years, Nureyev was a star of the London Royal Ballet and was a constant partner of the English ballerina Margot Fonteyn. Also danced with Yvette Chauvire, Carla Fracci, Noella Pontois.

In 1964 he staged Swan Lake at the Vienna Opera, performing the title role in a duet with Margot Fonteyn. At the end of the performance, the audience gave such a long ovation that the curtain was raised more than eighty times, which is a theater record.

Being the premier of the Viennese troupe, he received Austrian citizenship. He performed all over the world, working extremely intensively. He often gave 200 performances a year; in 1975, the number of his performances reached three hundred. He took part in classical and modern productions, acted a lot in films and on television, staged ballets and made his own editions of classical performances.

From 1983 to 1989, Nureyev was the director of the ballet troupe of the Paris Opera, and staged several performances there. He actively promoted young artists to the first positions, sometimes, as in the case of Sylvie Guillem, very conditionally observing the hierarchy levels accepted in Paris. Among the “Nureyev galaxy” are Elisabeth Platel, Monique Loudier, Isabelle Guerin, Manuel Legris, Charles Jude, Laurent Hilaire.

In 1987, he was able to obtain permission to enter the USSR to say goodbye to his dying mother - the visa was given for 72 hours, and the artist was limited in his ability to contact everyone he knew in his youth.

In the last years of his life, no longer able to dance, he began performing as a conductor.

In 1992 he conducted the Vienna Residenz Orchestra during its European tour. In the spring of the same year, at the invitation of the director of the Tatar Opera House Raufal Mukhametzyanov, Rudolf Nureyev visited Kazan, where he conducted the ballets “Romeo and Juliet” and “The Nutcracker” (the main role was performed by Nadezhda Pavlova).

In 1983, the HIV virus was discovered in Nureyev's blood.

On January 6, 1993, at the age of 54, the dancer died from complications of AIDS. According to Nureyev's wishes, he was buried in the Russian cemetery of Sainte-Genevieve-des-Bois near Paris. The grave is covered with a colored mosaic oriental carpet (the author of the sketch is the artist Ezio Frigerio).

Rudolf Nureyev's height: 173 centimeters.

Personal life of Rudolf Nureyev:

Rudolf Nureyev was a homosexual, although in his youth he also had heterosexual relationships.

After escaping to the West, he lived with the famous Danish homosexual dancer Erik Brun (1928-1986). Eric Brun was accepted into the company of the American Ballet Theater in 1949, and each of his performances was a real sensation. The aristocratic blond attracted the eyes of almost all women. Eric Brun had a fiancée - the famous beautiful ballerina Maria Tallchiff. But he never married her. Ironically, the two ballet geniuses were brought together by Maria Tallchiff. It was she who in 1961 asked Nuriev to accompany her to Bruno, with whom she performed the part in a ballet production in Copenhagen. During the trip, she called Eric and said light-heartedly: “There is someone here who would really like to meet you!”

Brun and Nureyev remained close for 25 years, until Brun's death in 1986.

Rudolf Nureyev was an anti-Semite and anti-communist, and for almost the entire period of his life in the West he was afraid of attack or kidnapping by the KGB. He associated the accident at the Vienna Opera, when miraculously no one was hurt, with this organization.

Earning a lot of money, he spent it randomly. He often lent large sums to little-known people and never checked whether the debt was returned to him. He bought luxury real estate in Europe and America, which required constant tax payments and other expenses, but practically did not live in most of his houses.

To manage his financial affairs, he registered the Ballet Promotion Foundation in Liechtenstein in 1975, with headquarters in Zurich.

He owned villas in La Turbie and on the island of Saint Barthelemy (France), an estate in Virginia and apartments in London and New York (Jacqueline Kennedy helped furnish the dancer with a six-room apartment in the Dakota Building).

In 1979, he acquired from the heirs of Leonide Massine Li Galli, an archipelago of three islands located near Positano. On Gallo Lungo, the largest of them, there were residential villas with a swimming pool and ballet halls, built by Massine in the ruins of a Saracen tower. Nureyev was actively involved in the design of the villas and the improvement of the island as a whole, investing heavily here, since there was no water or electricity, and everything needed could be delivered either by sea or by helicopter.

In Paris, he lived in a two-level apartment on the Quai Voltaire, house number 23. The dancer’s dream was to bring his mother here, which never happened. After his death, fans hoped that a museum would be built here, but the Nureyev Foundation almost immediately organized the sale of his property under the hammer at Christie's auctions. The first planned auctions in London and New York were canceled, and the Paris apartment was sealed at the protest of Nureyev's sister Roses and her daughter Guzel, who started litigation with the Foundation, in their opinion, misinterpreting the will in its favor. However, the auction took place in 1995 - in January in New York, where American property was sold ($7.9 million was raised) and in November in London, where Parisian items were sold (the main lot, a painting by Theodore Gericault, remained not sold).

According to the will, the European property was managed by the Ballet Promotion Foundation, registered by Nureyev in Liechtenstein in 1975, while the American property was managed by the newly created Rudolf Nureyev Dance Foundation, headquartered in Chicago. A small part of Nureyev's legacy - costumes, documents and personal belongings - was deposited in the National Library of France and the Carnavalet Museum. In 2013, on the initiative of Charles Jude and Thierry Fouquet, members of the board of directors of the Nureyev Foundation, the remaining items were exhibited in three halls of the National Center for Stage Costume in Moulins (exhibition design by Ezio Frigerio).

Filmography of Rudolf Nureyev:

1958 - Soulful flight (documentary)
1977 - Valentino - Rudolph Valentino
1983 - In plain sight (Exposed)
1991 - Rudolf Nureyev as he is (documentary)

Repertoire of Rudolf Nureyev:

"Laurencia" - Frondoso
"Swan Lake" - Prince Siegfried, Rothbart
"The Nutcracker" - Drosselmeyer, Prince
"Sleeping Beauty" - Blue Bird, Prince Florimund (Désiré)
“Margarita and Arman” - Arman
"La Bayadère" - Solor
"Raymonda" - four gentlemen, Jean de Brienne
"Giselle" - Count Albert
"Don Quixote" - Basil
"Corsair" - slave
"Romeo and Juliet" - Romeo, Mercutio
"La Sylphide" - James
"Petrushka" - Parsley
"The Vision of the Rose" - The Vision of the Rose
"Scheherazade" - The Golden Slave
"Afternoon of a Faun" - Faun
"Apollo Musagete" - Apollo
"Youth and Death" - Youth
"Prodigal son"
"Phaedra"
"Lost heaven"
"La Sylphides" - Youth
"Hamlet" - Hamlet
"Cinderella" - Producer
"Sideshow"
"Lunar Pierrot" - Pierrot
"Lucifer" - Lucifer
“Idiot” - Prince Myshkin
"Halo"
"Songs of the Wandering Apprentice"
"Sacred spring"
"The Moor's Pavane" - Othello
"Dark House"
"Lesson"
"Night Journey" - Oedipus
"The Scarlet Letter" - Reverend Dimmesdale

Productions by Rudolf Nureyev:

1964 - “Raymonda”
1964 - “Swan Lake”, Vienna Opera
1966 - “Don Quixote”
1966 - “Sleeping Beauty”
1966 - “Tancred”
1967 - “The Nutcracker”
1977 - “Romeo and Juliet”
1979 - “Manfred”
1982 - “Storm”
1985 - “Washington Square”
1986 - Bach Suite
1988 - “Cinderella”, Paris Opera
1992 - “La Bayadère”, Paris Opera

However, no one can name the exact spelling of his last name or patronymic. His last name is spelled differently - Nureyev or Nureyev, because when his grandfather received it, he did not know how to write; and his father was named at birth not Hamet, but Muhammad, and only later did he change his name. Nuriev did not even know the exact place of his birth - he was born on a train, somewhere near Irkutsk. He himself really liked this fact of his biography, and he willingly talked about it, thus explaining his passion for moving around the world with extraordinary ease. He was truly a global vagabond and did not visit Antarctica with his performances.

Nuriev, who glorified Russian ballet, was really not Russian. His mother, Farida, was from the Kazan Tatars, and his father was from a tiny Bashkir village near Ufa. Rudolph did not try to hush up his origins, as was customary in those years among people involved in art or science. On the contrary, he was proud of his nation and, in general, really looked like a swift, headstrong descendant of Genghis Khan, as he was repeatedly called. On occasion, he could, according to the recollections of his classmates at the choreographic school, emphasize that his people ruled over the Russians for three centuries.

During the first years of his life, little Rudik, as he was called at home, crossed the country from end to end twice: from west to east and back. Soon the family had to once again make the long journey from Moscow to the Urals.

His father, Khamet Nuriev, was a man to whom the Soviet government gave the opportunity to leave a remote village and, as they say, go out into the world. He became a political instructor, and his places of service were constantly changing, he moved from one garrison to another. It was inconvenient to take your family with you, so Farida and her young daughters were left alone. But when Khamet received an appointment to Vladivostok, she soon followed her husband. On this long journey, a boy was born who was later destined to write many bright pages in the history of ballet.

In Vladivostok, the family that grew during the journey did not live long. Khamet Nuriev, having received a new appointment, transported everyone to Moscow. The relative well-being of the family, very modest even by those unassuming standards, was soon completely destroyed by the outbreak of the Great Patriotic War. Hamet was mobilized in active army, and Farida was left alone again, with small children in her arms. During the first bombing of Moscow, the house where the Nureyevs lived was destroyed, and Farida, having collected her remaining belongings, hurried to leave the capital. As Rudolf Nureyev said, one of his first memories is leaving the city in a wheelbarrow.

The family moved to a small Bashkir village on the eastern slope of the Urals, where Farida hoped the war would not reach. The front really did not reach the Urals, but all the hardships of wartime came to the Nuriev family with interest. The hard work of his elders and the constant hunger and cold are all the memories that Nureyev has from those years: “It so happened that I owe the first impressions of my early childhood to an icy, dark and, most importantly, hungry world.” It is not surprising that the eternally hungry boy, who experienced hopeless poverty, subsequently began to value material well-being very highly.

It was impossible for a woman with children to live in a tiny village without any help, and in 1943 Farida moved to Ufa to live with her husband’s relatives. The living conditions of the Nureyevs in a tiny shack on the outskirts of the city differed little from those in the village: a low building with an earthen floor could hardly be called a home. The move did little to improve the family’s financial situation, and the Nureyevs were still tormented by the same poverty. Little Rudolf wore his sisters' clothes all the way to school - perhaps this, to some extent, later determined his characteristics. He even went to first grade wearing his sister's coat. Or rather, he didn’t go, but his mother brought him in her arms - the boy had no shoes.

Rudik’s only joy at that time was the radio, which Farida miraculously preserved from her pre-war prosperity. He loved listening to music and, trying to get into the rhythm, jumped from chair to chair. And when he first attended a ballet performance at the Ufa Theater, he understood exactly what he wanted, what he was striving for.

His mother encouraged his love of music, but his relationship with his father, who had returned from the front, was difficult. Hamet wanted to see in the boy a little man, a future soldier - and could not find a single trait in his son that would correspond to his own dreams. He took up raising the boy himself, but this did not lead to anything other than the final alienation of Rudik. From the moment Khamet Nuriev returned to his family, his relationship with his son took on the character of an ongoing struggle, and the boy was not going to give in. Your personality, your inner world he protected from any outside attacks.

Things weren't going any better at school either. From the very first grade, Rudolf was disliked by his classmates because he was different from them, because his interests were different. Interestingly, both the father and his classmates, outraged by his son’s dancing inclinations, nicknamed Rudolf “Ballerina.” The contemptuous nickname became prophetic. Nuriev's grades became worse from class to class, his character became more obstinate and cocky. In his school characteristics there are notes: “Nuriev is very nervous, prone to fits of anger, often fights with classmates.”

But during his school years, Rudolf already had an outlet, which, as it turned out later, became for him a window into the big world. National dance lessons were included in the school curriculum. The boy's talent was noticed, and when he was ten years old, he was accepted into the dance club at the Palace of Pioneers. It was led by Anna Udaltsova, a professional dancer who once performed in Diaghilev’s corps de ballet. It was she who first told the boy that he needed to go to Leningrad, to the choreographic school. This became Rudolf's dream for years. Udaltsova gave him his first lessons in classical dance, and then the former artist of the Kirov Theater, professional teacher E. Voitovich, began to study with him, for whom Nuriev retained respect throughout his life.

And at home, the confrontation with his father continued, especially escalating after Rudolf graduated from high school. His peers were already working or studying, acquiring the necessary profession - but he stubbornly did not want to do this, continuing to perform with dance groups in Ufa. His position in the family improved somewhat when he was accepted as an extra into the troupe of the Ufa Opera and Ballet Theater. He constantly attended ballet classes and was eventually offered a contract at the theater. But Nuriev refused, because he wanted to study in Leningrad and graduate from the choreographic school, and not stay in Ufa without, in fact, receiving any education.

In the summer of 1955, a festival of Bashkir art was held in Moscow, and the soloist of the ballet “Crane Song” (the same one that Rudolf saw for the first time in his life) could not participate in the trip. Nuriev, without hesitation, proposed his candidacy, although he did not know this party at all. He was taken on tour, and he began to diligently learn the role, but by the time he arrived in Moscow, he was retraining and received an injury, the treatment of which, as a rule, takes at least a month. But Nuriev appeared on stage within a few days.

He was worried, of course, not by the success of the ballet “Crane Song”, but by the impression that he himself made when performing in front of the artists of the Bolshoi Theater. Apparently, this impression was favorable, since Nuriev managed to obtain permission to enter the Moscow Choreographic School. However, the Moscow School did not have a dormitory at that time. And then Nuriev goes to Leningrad.

He came to the school on the famous Zodchego Rossi Street directly to director Shelkov and declared: “I am Rudolf Nureyev. I want to study here.” Oddly enough, Shelkov responded positively to such a strange statement and allowed Nuriev to take the exam (which, by the way, he later regretted more than once). Nuriev auditioned for a folk dance class. When he showed his solo classical number, the commission decided to enroll him. Nuriev could do very little at that time, but in this strange young man one could discern the makings of a talented dancer and extraordinary natural abilities. One of the oldest teachers at the school, Vera Kostrovitskaya, told him: “You can become a brilliant dancer, or you can become nothing. The second is likely.” This did not offend Nureyev at all, but only spurred his zeal for dancing. And he later remembered Kostrovitskaya as one of the best Russian teachers.

Rudolf Nureyev entered the school at the age of seventeen. In those years, this was not surprising: before the war, the Leningrad school practiced admitting “over-aged” students to evening courses and occasionally continued to accept students who had outgrown the usual age for admission to a choreographic school. Nuriev also had knowledge of the elementary fundamentals of choreography and was enrolled in the sixth grade, which was taught by the director of the school, Shelkov himself. Perhaps their short dialogue before Nuriev entered the school was their only normal conversation. The young man, unlike others and not wanting to be like them, irritated Shelkov, and the relationship between the director and the obstinate student became tense. However, Nuriev ignored the discipline and routine adopted at the school - he did what he wanted. Never missing dance classes, he often skipped general education subjects and disappeared from school in the evenings, which was prohibited. Completely ignoring objects that, in his opinion, were completely unnecessary for a ballet dancer, he was ready to dance all night long - the day was not enough for him.

One day, returning to his dorm room late at night, he discovered that his bed and food stamps were missing. Nuriev acted simply and effectively: he went to bed on the bare floor, in the morning, without breakfast, he went to class and fainted there from hunger. Oddly enough, Nuriev was never expelled from the school. However, few could understand this “Genghis Khan,” and most of his classmates and teachers treated him with wary hostility. In addition, the threat of being drafted into the army weighed heavily on him - after graduating from college, he had just reached conscription age. Then Nuriev, with his characteristic ingenuity, went to the director and stated that he was very worried about the waste of public funds on his training - after all, after serving in the army, he was unlikely to dance.

Oddly enough, this rather absurd argument had its effect, and Rudolf Nureyev was transferred from sixth to eighth grade. Nuriev’s teacher was the experienced teacher Alexander Ivanovich Pushkin, who was able to fully discern the original, bright talent of the young man, so unlike others. Nuriev later recalled his teacher with gratitude: “He filled his soul with excitement and a craving for dance.” A.I. Pushkin was truly one of the best choreography teachers in our country - Baryshnikov, Solovyov, Vikulov and many other excellent dancers studied with him.

True, Nuriev’s pride often suffered when studying with Pushkin - he did not always encourage his student. In 1956, he refused to include Rudolf Nureyev in a student play, believing that he was not yet ready for this. However, the obstinate Rudolf showed Pushkin a brilliantly executed male variation from the ballet Esmeralda. The teacher had nothing left to do, and Nuriev performed at the concert.

Nuriev had to finish ninth grade and say goodbye to school. He himself, of course, was eager for independence, but Pushkin believed that Rudolf could still learn a lot. Nuriev stayed at the school for a year. As Otis Stewart, the author of a biographical book about Nureyev, wrote about this period, “their joint work on the classical repertoire not only strengthened the artist’s technique, but also became the basis of his amazing ballet erudition...”

This year in Nuriev’s life was very successful - the main troupe of the Kirov Ballet went on tour, and he was able to dance the leading roles in nine performances. And his performance at a competition in Moscow in the summer of 1958, and then at the graduation performance, made the public and ballet specialists start talking about an unusual new star of male dance. After graduating from college, the aspiring dancer was faced with a choice: which offer should he accept? He was invited to join their troupes at the Kirov Theater, the Bolshoi Theater, and the Stanislavsky Musical Theater - an unprecedented situation for an ordinary college graduate.

To some extent, Nuriev repeated the fate of his predecessor, another legend of the ballet stage, Vaslav Nijinsky, who was offered to become her partner by Matilda Kshesinskaya, prima ballerina of the Mariinsky Theater. Nuriev received the same offer from the prima of his time, Natalia Dudinskaya. Nuriev accepted him, remaining at the Kirov Theater.

However, people involved in the “management” of art were worried about the obvious rebellious spirit of Rudolf Nureyev, and his non-traditional sexual orientation, which he did not try to hide, although he did not advertise it as much as he did in more recent times. later years, gave rise to persecution. Nuriyev was faced with an unexpected obstacle: since the Ufa Theater paid half of the amount for his training, he was obliged to return there for several years. With great difficulty, using all possible connections, the head of the Kirov Theater managed to keep him in the troupe.

Nuriev formed a large group of fans even before he began performing on the stage of the Kirov Theater - from the time of student performances. And, of course, his theatrical debut in “Laurencia” caused delight, which rarely befalls a beginning artist. Success accompanied Rudolf Nureyev throughout the subsequent years of his work at the Kirov Theater (though there were only three of them).

He immediately occupied a special position in the theater. Nureyev never had to wait for roles, and his repertoire included almost everything that a ballet dancer could dream of - “Raymonda”, “Sleeping Beauty”, “Giselle”, “La Bayadère”, “Swan Lake”, “The Nutcracker”, “Don” -Quixote" and many others. The famous ballerinas themselves asked Nureyev to dance with them. In addition, from the very first steps of his artistic career, he allowed himself to make changes to the costumes and choreography of the parts he performed, and this was allowed to him.

However, his relationships with colleagues off stage were far from simple. Many of those who had the opportunity to work with Nuriev in those years speak of his harshness, unceremoniousness and tactlessness. In addition, Nuriev’s personal independence from any generally accepted rules and conventions worried the theater management. This also worried those who, on duty, oversaw the affairs of the artists. As a result, Nuriyev, like any “dissident” in those years, especially those in the public eye, was subject to constant surveillance by state security agencies. He was never allowed to perform in those performances that were attended by members of the government, and Rudolf Nureyev always found himself on tour precisely at those moments when foreign artists came to Leningrad. True, he was included in the touring groups three times, but surveillance of him intensified to the limit. And then these tours stopped.

In 1961, it became known that the Kirov Theater troupe would go on tour to Paris. Nuriev was sure that he would not be allowed to go to Paris. However, the trip could not take place without the participation of talented youth, and Nuriev was included in the group. He prepared carefully for the trip and rehearsed a lot. Those who watched him also prepared.

Subsequently, there was a lot of debate about whether Nureyev even then intended to stay in the West. They wrote that the artist was a hater of the Soviet system and left his homeland for political reasons. In fact, Nuriev was never interested in politics. By the way, in all the many years he spent in the West, he never allowed himself to publicly criticize the Soviet system. Rudolf Nureyev was of little interest in the system under which he lived; he needed to dance as much as he wanted, what he wanted and how he wanted, and also to have a decent standard of living - this consideration was always important to him. And almost everyone with whom Nuriev communicated during that period claims that he had no premeditated intention. The artist tasted freedom and could not refuse it. Personal freedom and freedom of creativity have always dominated the motives for the actions of this eternal rebel. However, no one knows the exact answer to whether Nuriev planned his act in advance or acted under the influence of the moment.

The tour in Paris was ending, and the troupe had to fly to London. Suddenly, right at the airport, Rudolf Nureyev was told that he would not go to London, but to Moscow - allegedly because his mother was seriously ill. Nuriev rushed to the French police and with their help he managed to stay at the airport. The Soviet attache came to meet with him, but did not achieve any results. Nuriev asked for political asylum.

A week later he was already performing as a soloist with the Marquis de Cuevas International Ballet, dancing in the ballet “The Blue Bird”. However, work in this troupe did not last long - Nuriev went to Copenhagen, where he wanted to fulfill two of his desires - to meet Vera Volkova, an excellent emigrant teacher, and to meet the Danish dancer Erik Brun, whom he had seen back in Russia in a film about ballet. Nureyev's wishes, as a rule, came true - these too came true. Moreover, in addition to meeting Brun, who impressed him as a dancer and as a man and became his close friend, Rudolf Nureyev met the famous ballerina Margot Fonteyn, who was the idol of the Western public. She herself expressed a desire to meet “this Russian guy.” And in November 1961, Nuriev was already dancing at Fonteyn’s benefit performance. Their collaboration lasted for many years, their friendship even longer, until Fontaine’s death.

Rudolf Nureyev's performance made a stunning impression. "Nuriev rushed to the front of the stage and spun in a cascade of devilishly swift pirouettes. But the indelible impression remained not even from the dancer’s virtuosity, but from his artistic temperament and drama. No one could remain indifferent to the flame burning in his eyes, to the incredible energy that promised even more exciting impressions,” recalled one of the eyewitnesses.

Nuriev began his career in the West with a scandal over his unexpected refusal to return to Moscow and continued it with shocking behavior - both on stage and off. From his first steps it became clear that Rudolf Nureyev is a phenomenon that the modern ballet stage has never seen before. Brightness, emotionality and sexuality - these were the main features of his work that were primarily mentioned by all ballet critics and spectators. In the field of men's dance, he made a real revolution - and not so much thanks to his technique, but to the inexplicable impression that he knew how to produce. Before the appearance of Nuriev, male dance, largely thanks to the influence of Balanchine, was only a necessary background for the ballerina.

They quite rightly wrote about Nuriev later that his performance had its shortcomings. However, men's dance not only became equal to women's, but also, when performed by Nuriev, acquired an independent meaning, filled with no less beauty and expressiveness. He was not afraid to show a beautiful male body on the ballet stage, using, in contrast to the prevailing trend, “a minimum of clothing and a maximum of makeup” (of course, if this did not run counter to the role he was performing).

Of course, Rudolf Nureyev could not have achieved such a revolutionary effect with stage techniques and choreographic techniques alone. The personality of the dancer itself was of great importance. His exotic appearance with sharp, oriental facial features, expressive, expressive plasticity, and most importantly - an unquenchable inner fire that was visible in his every movement and gesture. To many, Nureyev’s inexplicable appeal seemed simply magical. It is not for nothing that in many reviews of him as a dancer the epithets “otherworldly” and “inhuman” are constantly encountered. According to Otis Stewart, “the world undoubtedly knew more technically stronger dancers, possessing perfect lines... But not one has yet appeared that even remotely resembles this thin wild Pan, who managed to debunk in the eyes of the public the usual prince, forever standing “in the wings,” and turn him into a star as bright and shining as only ballerinas were before him.”

But off the stage, Nureyev, according to most of those who knew him, was simply unbearable. He did not give himself the trouble to be tactful or follow even the basic rules of communication. Having initially received financial support from Eric Brun, Rudolf Nureyev began studying with the Danish ballet group, trying to improve his technique, but immediately gained hostility towards himself. After some time, he received an invitation to perform at the American Ball Theater, but stayed there for exactly a week and left, insulting the director of the troupe.

However, his relationship with Margot Fonteyn was different. This forty-two-year-old world celebrity hesitated for a long time whether to take “this Russian” as a partner. As a matter of fact, she didn’t need a new partner - she was going to leave the ballet stage. At her benefit performance, she refused to dance with Nureyev; he did not perform his number with her. However, after some time, Fontaine wanted to try a duet with Nureyev - this dancer made such a strong and unusual impression.

The test turned out to be successful, and the joint work enriched both. Fonteyn's dancing acquired a passion, femininity and verve that, according to some critics, she had previously lacked. And Nuriev’s dance acquired the poetry and refinement characteristic of Fontaine. The couple made a stunning impression on the audience. As Nuriev himself later said, the audience was captivated by their dance because they themselves were captivated by their work.

The audience truly went crazy. It was simply impossible to get to a performance with the participation of this duet. According to the recollections of one of the concert bureau employees who organized the Royal Ballet's tour in America, it was real hysteria. People pitched tents near the Metropolitan Opera building and stayed on duty for three days to get tickets.

“Having been born on a train, he drove his life at a speed of one hundred kilometers per hour.” Indeed, Nuriev’s career rise in the West was rapid - from a little-known emigrant youth, he quickly turned into a star of unprecedented magnitude. However, in his homeland there was no intention of recognizing his glory for many years. All mention of the artist simply disappeared from the press, as if he had never existed. All his photographs were destroyed, and even those in which he was taken together with other artists.

During the first time of his stay in the West, Rudolf Nureyev stated in his interviews that he might decide to return to his homeland if he did not find a place in his new life. However, this, most likely, was just a game for the public - it is unlikely that Nureyev seriously believed that he could return. Nothing else but the camps could await him. Immediately after the event that changed his whole life, an open meeting of the Kirov Theater troupe was held, where the artists were forced to unanimously brand him as a “defector.” And in January 1962, an official trial of Rudolf Nureyev took place (in absentia, of course), at which he was sentenced as a traitor to the Motherland to seven years of forced labor and serving his term in a maximum security colony.

And even after such an action, the KGB did not want to leave him alone. For a long time, Nuriev, according to people close to him, was tormented by fear of Soviet state security agents, which cannot be attributed solely to the artist’s impressionability and suspiciousness. For many years, he was harassed by anonymous threatening calls, most often just before going on stage. And several times, inventive pursuers forced his mother to call and persuade her son to return to his homeland.

Nureyev grew into a figure whose significance was unexpected for himself. He almost caused the disruption of the cultural exchange program between the USSR and Great Britain - the Soviet Union put forward a demand that the Royal Ballet terminate its contract with Nureyev. The British turned out to be more firm and defended the dancer, but France, under the threat of canceling the Bolshoi Theater tour, canceled the performance with the participation of Rudolf Nureyev, scheduled for production at the Grand Opera.

The only thing the artist still wanted from the Soviet Union was permission from his mother to visit him. But this particular permission was never given. Long after Nuriev's departure, his sisters and their children were allowed to visit Nuriev in Monte Carlo and Paris, but Farida Nuriyeva was not given such permission, despite her deteriorating health, which left her little chance of seeing her son again. Nuriev did everything he could, used his enormous connections, turned to his influential acquaintances and fans - everything was useless. In 1976, a committee was even created, consisting of famous cultural figures, which collected more than ten thousand signatures asking to give Rudolf Nureyev’s mother permission to leave the USSR. Forty-two senators of the United States of America appealed personally to the country's leaders, the UN interceded for Nuriev, but everything turned out to be useless. Probably, if Nuriev had not become such a famous artist, an idol of the Western public, it would have been much easier to achieve such permission.

Only after Mikhail Gorbachev came to power was Nureyev able to make two trips to his homeland. In 1987, he was allowed to come to Ufa for a short time in order to say goodbye to his dying mother, who by that time already recognized few people. And two years later, Nuriev was given the opportunity to dance several performances on the stage that he so dreamed of in his youth - at the Kirov Theater. However, the tour brought only disappointment to both Nuriev and those who so wanted to see him. The artist was already seriously ill, in addition, he was haunted by injuries. And the repertoire was chosen without taking into account the performer’s physical form. The ballet La Sylphide required flawless performance of classical dance, which Rudolf Nureyev was unable to do at that moment.

He danced with great difficulty, overcoming physical pain. He himself was upset by the trip. Perhaps the greatest value of these tours for Russian viewers was that after them, films with the participation of Rudolf Nureyev, which were previously inaccessible to them, began to appear on the screen.

But all this was much later - in the meantime, Rudolf Nureyev continued his brilliant march through the stages of Western theaters, leaving behind him a trail of public delight, scandals in the press and the hatred of many colleagues. However, even those who did not feel any feelings towards Nuriev the man positive emotions, could not help but bow to Nureyev the dancer.

The permanent company with which he worked extensively during his early years in the West was the Royal Ballet of London. As one of the soloists of this troupe argued, Nuriev somewhat determined the development of the Royal Ballet through his participation in its productions.

After 1964, Rudolf Nureyev began to dance less with the Royal Ballet - touring took up more and more of his time. He danced Swan Lake with the Vienna Opera in 1964, Raymonda with the Australian Ballet in 1965, and staged his ballet Tancred at La Scala in 1966. However, he bought his first house in London, where he invariably returned during that period. But by the mid-seventies, when Margot Fonteyn stopped performing, Nureyev began performing with the Royal Ballet less and less and no longer considered himself a member of its troupe. True, he did not leave the troupe on his own initiative - Nuriev managed to acquire several loyal friends and a huge number of enemies among the members of the Royal Ballet. “As soon as Margot left ballet,” Nuriev said in an interview, “the idea immediately arose to remove me, to turn me from a person into nothing.”

However, this separation from London was by no means a big blow for Nuriev. The best theaters in the world fought for the right to invite him to their troupe, despite the fact that Nuriev demanded (and received) fabulous fees for a ballet dancer.

They talked a lot about Nuriev and continue to talk about him as a person who set enrichment as his goal. However, having instantly gained worldwide fame, he did something on stage that was not at all necessary for commercial success. He always danced on the verge of risk, completely surrendering to the elements of dance. Already the owner of a colossal fortune, Rudolf Nureyev continued to work as hard as in the first years of his work. He loved money for money's sake and dance for dance's sake. Even people who knew Nureyev well and did not treat him too warmly argued that if he had to choose between money and ballet, he would choose ballet. But, since fate gave him the opportunity to make good money by dancing, he had to use it to the fullest.

True, he could not have acquired such a fortune by dancing alone - the maximum exit price at that time was no more than ten thousand dollars. However, Nuriev, as one of his acquaintances put it, was a financial empire consisting of one person. His financial sense would be a credit to a professional, and he handled all his affairs himself, not trusting anyone. Of course, he used the advice of consultants, but he always made decisions about investing his funds himself. Moreover, in addition to the fact that his money brought him even more money, he managed to think through a scheme for placing it in such a way that he practically did not pay taxes on his huge fortune. To do this, he even accepted Austrian citizenship, since this country was distinguished by its lenient tax legislation.

However, Nuriev's main activity was, of course, ballet. Collaboration with the famous entrepreneur and producer Sol Hurok played a big role in his career. They needed each other and immediately realized it. "Hurok's agency is almost unique among large enterprises of this type in that it is designed to make money. It needs profits, and it does not receive any subsidies. As soon as Yurok realized that all he needed to keep the money flowing was Nureyev's performances, It was not the presence of such monsters as the Bolshoi or the Royal Ballet - and Nureyev in any environment - that the future of ballet companies around the world turned out to be predetermined."

Hurok organized North American tours of the London Royal Ballet starting in 1963, with Canada included in the tour itinerary. After some time, Nuriev, seeing how successful the tour was, invited Hurok to create a touring version of the ballet “The Sleeping Beauty,” which he was going to perform with the National Ballet of Canada. The artist choreographed the ballet himself. It was a huge success. Nuriev's collaboration with this ballet troupe turned out to be very successful and lasted about sixteen years.

Of course, Nuriev worked not only with these two ballet companies. The list of productions in which he participated in all over the world is extremely long. He danced and staged ballets at the Vienna Opera, at Balanchine's American Ballet Theater, and at La Scala.

Very interesting was the appeal of Nuriev, a classical dancer, to modern choreography. His first step in this direction was a television appearance in 1971 as part of the Paul Taylor Dance Troupe. According to Stewart, “for one evening there was a truce in the war between classical dance and modern dance that had not subsided for half a century... Until then, classical ballet dancers had not mixed with barefoot dancers, and they responded with the same distrust.”

Nureyev was already thirty-three years old, and was not so far away from his fortieth birthday - the usual age at which a dancer’s career ends. However, he did not even think that someday he would have to leave the stage. He was not going to leave - and did not leave. However, he needed to look for some new forms of self-expression - both because his physical capabilities in a few years would no longer be what they were before, but mainly because Rudolf Nureyev could not help but be in constant movement and creative search.

As the famous American choreographer Louis wrote, “Nuriev has the great honor of building a bridge between ballet and modern dance. It was he who took the decisive step, took risks, without fear of losing. New language he perceived the movements as something he should try himself. And he had the courage to do it... He saw modern dance as the guarantee of his future. It never occurred to him to leave the stage in his prime, so he constantly tried to expand his capabilities."

Only he could do what Nuriev did in those years - with his independence, courage and tendency to shocking, so irreconcilable was the war between the two movements in dance. For him, working in a new direction meant hard work to master a completely new, unusual aesthetics, new principles of movements, angular, sharp, completely different from the principles of classical dance. But Nuriev could dance anything - and wanted to do it.

The place where he was able to fully express himself in a new role was the London Royal Ballet, whose repertoire included works by both classical and new choreographers. Rudolf Nureyev himself said that modern dance attracted him not only because of its different choreography, but also because of its great variety and richness of themes, inaccessible to classical dance.

Modern dance opened up new possibilities for Rudolf Nureyev, but the dancer also opened up new perspectives for this dance. Nuriev’s special emotional intensity, which no other dancer could create, his unique expression, combined with the wide possibilities of modern dance, also expressive in nature, created a stunning effect. Nuriev studied, despite the fact that he was a star, whose equal in choreography at that time simply did not exist, but he himself could teach choreographers a lot. He began dancing with the Martha Graham ensemble, and their performances were a huge success. The event was the premiere of the play "Lucifer" on Broadway - tickets for the best seats cost up to ten thousand dollars, and all the celebrities of America gathered at the premiere, including the wife of President Ford.

Another aspect of Rudolf Nureyev’s intense, versatile work was cinema. He had long been a fan of Western cinema, was seriously interested in the specifics of working in cinema, and simply could not pass up the matter that interested him so much. His work in cinema began already in 1963, with the performance of the role of the Corsair in the film “An Evening with the Royal Ballet”. This was followed by the role of Romeo with MacMillan's ballet, and in 1966 - "Young Man and Death". However, performing the same parts as in a regular performance, with the only difference that it was filmed, did not quite suit Nuriev.

In 1964, he was offered the role of the Serpent in the film "The Bible", but Nuriev asked for such an amount that it turned out to be excessive for the producer. In 1970, a film was conceived about the fate of Vaslav Nijinsky - with Nureyev in the title role. Once again the project was not implemented, this time for reasons beyond the artist’s control. Rudolf Nureyev decided to act as a producer himself, and in 1972 the film “I am a Dancer” was shot, but Nureyev, despite the success of the work, was extremely dissatisfied with the result, saying that only a few scenes from the entire film were tolerable.

But the film served as widespread publicity for his cinematic work. Six months later, Nureyev completed filming the film Don Quixote, which is a full-length widescreen cinematic version of the ballet of the same name, which Rudolf Nureyev once staged for the Australian Ballet. The dancer played the main role in it, and was also the director and co-producer. As a result, this work has been recognized as one of the best film ballets and one of the best interpretations of Cervantes' novel.

Rudolf Nureyev's next work in cinema was not so much dance as acting. This time he played the role famous actor Silent films by Rudolph Valentino. The film received recognition from the audience, but critics did not rate Nureyev’s performance too highly. The not entirely successful performance, according to experts, was explained by the fact that Nuriev, accustomed to seeing an audience in front of him, could not bring himself to play with the same intensity of emotions in the studio, in front of a camera instead of an auditorium. However, in the annual review of the best films, "Valentino" took eighth place.

Rudolf Nureyev's next film work was the spy thriller "Unmasked", where he played the role of a violinist who single-handedly fights an international terrorist organization. And soon, unexpectedly for his fans, he began to take part in the famous sketch program "The Muppet Show", revealing an extraordinary sense of humor and resourcefulness.

Despite the fact that Nuriev regularly worked in films and on television, his main work, of course, remained ballet. In 1983, a big event happened in the life of Rudolf Nureyev - he took over the leadership of the ballet troupe of the Grand Opera Theater. He hesitated for a long time, unable to decide whether he, unable to live in one place for several weeks, should take on long-term obligations associated with a long stay in Paris. However, by this time, Rudolf Nureyev had already begun to have problems on stage - the dance was already given to him with great stress. Age, of course, made itself felt (he was already forty-five years old), and this was also aggravated by constant ailments and injuries. Only later did it become clear that Nuriev’s ill health - frequent colds, sudden weight loss, weakness - were symptoms of a terrible disease that had befallen him. But in 1983, the artist did not yet suspect that he had AIDS, and continued to consider the deterioration in health temporary. He led a busy creative life, and the period before he accepted the offer from the Grand Opera was extremely tense. Nureyev danced in Japan, America, Paris, and other cities of the world, moving around the world with his characteristic amazing speed and ease.

At the Grand Opera, Nuriev simultaneously became a permanent soloist of the troupe, choreographer and director. The work ahead of him was incredibly difficult, not only professionally. The main difficulties were the behind-the-scenes intrigues that permeated not only the entire troupe, but also involved government officials involved in the affairs of this theater. Rudolf Nureyev and the Grand Opera troupe immediately took opposing positions. Nuriev was dissatisfied with the fact that they did not want to obey him unquestioningly, and the artists did not at all like the manners of the new director and his demands, which they considered inappropriate. Six years of Nuriev’s work in this theater became years of war, waged with varying success. However, Nuriev never gave up his positions. One against all - this was a natural situation for him.

Nuriev’s behavior was not always decent - he fully supported his reputation as a rude and brawler. However, after several years, it became clear that he was able to transform the rather heterogeneous Grand Opera troupe into a first-class one, distinguished by high professionalism. “I deeply respect what he did for the theater,” wrote choreographer Jerome Robbins about this work of Rudolf Nureyev. “He pulled the troupe out of depression and taught it to maintain discipline, set a certain goal. He was sincerely interested in ballet and artists and really created a good, professional troupe." One of the clear results of his work was the troupe’s tour in America in 1986, which had not happened since 1948. The tour was a triumph, which confirmed the highest level of the troupe achieved through the efforts of Rudolf Nureyev.

Over the years of his work in the West, Rudolf Nureyev managed to do so much that his efficiency is simply amazing, as is the variety of his roles. He worked with the most famous choreographers in the world, who staged performances especially for him: F. Ashton ("Margarita and Armand"), R. Petit ("Paradise Lost", "Ecstasies", "Peléas and Melisande"), M. Bejart (" Songs of the Wandering Apprentice"), M. Graham ("Lucifer"), M. Louis ("Moment"), etc.

Nureyev's choreographer's activities are also extensive. Starting with the revival of classical Russian ballets, he gradually came to create new independent editions of these ballets and original productions of his own composition. On the stages of London, Milan, Vienna, Stockholm, Berlin, Paris, he staged “Shadows”, “Raymonda”, “The Tempest”, “Swan Lake”, “Tancred”, “Don Quixote”, “Sleeping Beauty”, “The Nutcracker” ", "Romeo and Juliet", "La Bayadère", "Manfred".

However, professional success, unfortunately, was not accompanied by an improvement in the artist’s health. However, by this time Rudolf Nureyev knew that there could be no improvement - he had already been examined and found out what exactly he was sick with. He tried to fight, underwent treatment with all possible drugs, but this brought him only temporary relief. He soon faced the social consequences of his illness. As soon as suspicions arose that he actually had AIDS, many of his acquaintances stopped communicating with him.

Nevertheless, despite the awareness of his own doom and the deterioration of his physical condition, Nuriev continued to work hard. Nothing could break the spirit of this extraordinary man. However, the tours of the last period of his life and work were extremely unsuccessful. Reviews in the press were extremely negative, which could not but worsen Nureyev’s morale. True, then he found for himself a new, completely unexpected type of activity, in which he proved himself very successful - he took up conducting seriously and surprised even professionals with his abilities and hard work.

Unfortunately, the illness no longer left Nureyev a chance to continue working; he felt worse and worse. Doctors considered it a miracle that this man was able to lead an intense creative life for more than ten years after the onset of a terrible illness, saying that Nuriev extended his active existence virtually only through the efforts of his will. But in 1992, at the premiere of the ballet “La Bayadère” staged by him at the Grand Opera, which marked the solemn event - the presentation of the highest award of France for services in the field of art, the Order of the Legion of Honor, to Rudolf Nureyev - the hero of the occasion was no longer able to stand on his feet . Throughout the ceremony, he, picturesquely draped in scarlet silk, sat in a chair that more closely resembled a throne. The pomp of the setting contrasted sharply with his haggard face.

And everyone present, and Rudolf Nureyev himself, knew that the award ceremony was at the same time his farewell - farewell to the theater and to life, which for him was actually the same thing, and on January 6, 1993, the great artist died.