RUDOLF NUREYEV: The Life
Julie Kavanagh
BBC Radio 4’s Book of the Week.
Ballet’s first pop icon, Nureyev revolutionised an old art form, bringing a new young audience to opera houses, and sparking Rudimania across the globe. From his birth on a train in Siberia at the height of Stalin’s Terrors, Nureyev’s life was extraordinary.
His career was decided at the age of 8 and nine years later, leaving his Tatar peasant family behind him, he realised his dream of studying at the Kirov’s school.
The account of Nureyev’s Leningrad years has never been more compellingly told, focusing on a teacher of genius who moulded the late starter into a star, the dancer’s homosexual rite of passage, a secret liaison with an East German student who was the catalyst behind Nureyev’s escape to the West. The 1961 defection was just the beginning. Nureyev spent the rest of his life breaking barriers, re-inventing male technique, and ‘crashing the gates’ of modern dance.
787 pages, hardback
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