Before embarking on Julie Kavanagh’s magnificent Nureyev, I had recently the pleasure of reading Richard Buckle’s The Adventures of a Ballet Critic. This passionate and witty memoir (a book so obsessively driven by the author’s love of dance, I defy anyone to read it and not be intoxicated by this love) gives a wonderfully vivid picture of the English ballet scene after the war. The main characters featured among the dramatis personae include Fred (Ashton), Billy (Chappell), Bobby (Helpmann), Margot (Fonteyn), and Madam (Ninette de Valois). You get the feeling this rather cosy and oh-so-naughty group with their private jokes and schoolgirly tiffs could be amusingly transformed into the comedic world of Ronald Firbank, where these fey men, enthralled by a dark beauty, Fonteyn, are strictly dominated by a rather stern and reproving de Valois.
This is how it was before Nureyev. For when, after a brilliant season by the Kirov in Paris, Nureyev sought refuge in the West, and leapt to freedom — or, as he insisted, in fact walked — Fonteyn invited him to appear at her Royal Academy gala, Ashton choreographed his solo, and de Valois cleverly realised she had to coax the young star into joining the Royal Ballet. Nothing, as Kavanagh points out, was ever the same again.
Nothing was certainly ever the same for those of us who were lucky to be members of the audience, when Nureyev exploded onto the Opera House stage, for besides demonstrating his outlandish showmanship, his ardour in partnership and great physical beauty, he brought something we had not seen much of in those portals — sex.
Male British dancers were personified chiefly by Helpmann, a virtuoso performer with a strong tendency for exaggeration, i.e. camp, or Michael Somes, Fonteyn’s very fine partner, who was effective but a little buttoned up. You felt he must have had a good war. You could never say that of Nureyev, a child very much of his time, the Sixties, unruly, dangerous, and unpredictable. To Ashton he was a ‘mixture of Tartar, a faun, and a kind of lost urchin. He’s the Rimbaud of the steppes’. Kenneth Tynan, an unwilling visitor to Covent Garden, confided in his Observer piece, ‘I instantly recognised the physical ideal of romantic ballet and its audience’.
Nureyev was indeed the very personification of the ideal romantic hero, ‘a frail, wild animal’, and his partnership with the divine Fonteyn, the beautifully lyrical prima ballerina, created a magic rarely encountered in the theatre. To a disgruntled American critic Fonteyn had ‘gone, as it were, to the grand ball with a gigolo.’ But de Valois was delighted. She had never seen Fonteyn ‘so liberated’. Kavanagh describes very well how their differences harmonised on stage, blending into an effect much like the neo-Impressionists’ ‘simultaneous contrast’, in which diverse colours … recompose in the eyes of the spectator to produce new shades.
For all the claims about Nureyev’s megalomania, it seems his special gift was for sharing the stage with his great female partners and, Prospero like, reanimating them — not just Fonteyn, but also the brilliantly accomplished Merle Park, a regular partner, and the extraordinary Lynn Seymour, one of his favourite ballerinas and a great friend. It was as if his aptitude for making love to his audience was subtly balanced by the ardent love he made onstage to his partners.
Nureyev’s appetite to learn was inexhaustible. ‘I’ve tried to reject everything in life which doesn’t enrich or directly concern my single dominating passion,’ he wrote. Dance was, of course, the passion. In Leningrad he went all the time to the Hermitage galleries. ‘I need it like food,’ he said. He was desperate for knowledge, and sought out the company of people who could help his self-education. He preached constantly about the importance of education to his young friends. He used to say, ‘You can lose your country and all your possessions, but they can never take away your knowledge.’
It would be misleading to suggest he was unique in this area, for many performers find the education they missed at school and university can somehow evolve into an almost religious quest for knowledge as they explore their roles. Still, it does seem as if the Soviet-educated dancers tend to be more intellectually curious than their British counterparts. This is partly due to the more thorough education they receive in dance academies, but more likely it is because the artistic and intellectual worlds in the eastern bloc are more connected to the world of dance there. The incomparable Makarova is very knowledgeable about literature and theatre, and could regularly be spotted here at cultural events. In the present Royal Ballet company, the poetic Ukrainian star, Ivan Putrov, is often to be seen at galleries, museums and theatres.
Nureyev not only saw every play and opera, visited galleries, devoured poetry and classical literature, he later, as his dancing days began to diminish, studied the keyboard works of Bach, playing the piano, harpsichord and organ. Towards the end of his life he even attempted to conduct, but as an observer pointed out, while his performance as conductor was impeccable, his actual conducting was just ‘passable’. At an exhibition in Paris devoted to Nureyev not long after his death, one of the most moving displays was of his music scores — covered with markings and suggestions about tempi and phrasing. ‘In the first place is music, which will remain with me to the end of my days, and then ballet, which will some day betray me,’ he said.
A lot has been made in some quarters about Nureyev’s bad behaviour. Kavanagh is mercifully non-judgmental even when his tantrums go way beyond the pale. After all, she knows well that most artists who have the special temperament to be star performers often have wayward tempers. It goes with the territory. It is naive to want, say, Callas to be a soft-spoken Greek lady who likes knitting, or Nureyev to be a ‘regular guy’. I met him quite a few times. He was always charming, sometimes extremely funny, but actually rather shy. A nice example of his naughtiness I witnessed one Easter, when our hostess invited her guests to paint Easter eggs. We were each given a little set of watercolours, and set about our task, nervously attempting to make our eggs decorative à la Vassarely or Bridget Riley. Nureyev took much longer with his egg and delivered it with the hint of a smirk. What he had very precisely drawn was a rabbit, its legs splayed wide apart, being sodomised by an enormous penis. He was fun. The fact is his many friends and colleagues adored him, and miss him to this day.
This book is a definitive biography of a performing artist. The writer understands well the ups and downs, the loneliness, and the sheer drudgery of the working life. It gives one not just an enormous admiration for the genius of Nureyev, and the sacrifice he made for his art, but also a renewed respect and love for the art of dance, and its dedicated practitioners.
O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?
Comments