“Ask anyone to name a dancer – the
chances are that they will say “Rudolf Nureyev”. Since
his first appearance in the west in 1961, hailed as the
most exciting dancer of his time, he has dominated the
dance scene... His commitment to his profession is absolute.
His fiery Tartar temperament leads to recurrent clashes
with authority and is part of the Nureyev legend. With
the charisma of a pop superstar, known to a vast public,
he has given more performances a year – and been seen by
more audiences worldwide – than any other dancer, so great
is his urge to dance...”
Well, to tell the truth, by that
point – just 3½ minutes into the documentary – I already
felt like switching off.
“Ask anyone to name a dancer – the
chances are that they will say “Rudolf Nureyev”. Really?
Anyone?
Let’s get real here. What might just be true of the metropolitan
glitterati in the Kings Road, Chelsea, is pretty unlikely
to have been the case in Kings Road, Cleethorpes, or in Kings
Road, Colwyn Bay.
In one sense, this film was simply
made too early. The fact that it was produced during Nureyev’s
lifetime – and clearly with his co-operation – seems to have
compromised its critical judgement. Were that syrupy opening
commentary to be rewritten today, 16 years after Nureyev’s
death in Paris at the age of just 54, it would surely, in
these more cynical and celebrity-debunking times, be nowhere
near as uncritically gushing. It would, after all, have had
to take into account the far less than attractive human being – greedy,
self-centred and in many ways misanthropic – so convincingly
pictured in Julie Kavanagh’s acclaimed 800-pages doorstopper
Rudolf
Nureyev: the life (London, 2007).
But perhaps, after all, we ought
to be grateful that Ms. Foy’s film was made when it was,
for while the year 1991 was, thanks to Gorbachev’s reforms,
late enough to allow ordinary Russians to talk on the record
more freely, it was still early enough to catch several invaluable
contributors while they were yet alive (one of them, ex-Ballets
Russes dancer Anna Undeltsova, was actually interviewed at
the age of 101!)
So switching off would, in fact,
have been a mistake, as this turns out to be a worthwhile
and enlightening way of spending 90 minutes or so – because
of the dramatic story it tells, the compelling witnesses
it produces and, above all, for another opportunity to see
some quite stunning recordings of Nureyev on stage.
The dramatic story is well known.
Born of Tartar origins – a fact repeatedly referred to in
order, it seems, to both explain and excuse some of his unconventional
behaviour – and raised in the most unpromising circumstances
(bleak poverty, remote provincial location, unsympathetic
father), Nureyev enjoyed a less than promising start in life.
But, so the story goes, his utterly single-minded determination
to use his innate dancing abilities to escape to a more colourful,
glamorous world propelled him from Bashkir folk dancing classes
to the school of the Kirov Ballet (and there could be no
better proof of the sheer dreariness of his Bashkir childhood
home than the fact that to him even grey 1950s Leningrad
appeared glamorous in comparison). Then, after years spent
first under the Kirov’s frighteningly strict training regime
and subsequently as a rising young soloist, came his dramatic
1961 defection to the west – like something straight out
of a tale by Ian Fleming, with KGB “nurses” desperate to
give him a tranquillising injection for his “nerves” so that
he could be quickly bundled onto a plane back to Russia.
Thereafter the story, at least
as told here, becomes one of huge artistic and personal success,
with western audiences bowled over by Nureyev’s well-attested
technical ability, artistry, charisma and sex appeal – a
potent combination not hitherto generally exhibited by male
dancers this side of the Iron Curtain.
While the film’s retelling of the
Nureyev saga holds no surprises – indeed, it ignores altogether
many interesting but rather less flattering aspects of his
life – it does turn up some quite fascinating interviewees.
The Russian ones from his youth offer particular insights:
as the film points out, news of Nureyev’s successes in the
west was deliberately withheld from the Soviet public, so
such testimony emerges untainted by any hint of uncritical
western idolatry of the “Rudi-mania” variety. It is fascinating
to note, too, some divergences of opinion. Thus, while Anna
Undeltsova (spelled thus on the DVD cover but as “Udeltsova” on
the film itself) loyally adheres to the Party line that Nureyev
ought never to have defected from the Soviet Union, his old
school teacher Taisiam Khalturina opines that fleeing to
freedom was the best thing that he could ever have done.
For many viewers, of course, the
highlights of this documentary will be provided by the film
of Nureyev in action. The clips – some quite brief but one
or two others quite substantial – range in date from 1958
(a short excerpt from
Le Corsair in a Soviet newsreel
showing him winning that year’s Moscow Dance Contest) to
1978. We see Nureyev performing in some of the great staples
of the Romantic repertoire:
The Sleeping Beauty (a
home movie fragment from 1961 and a stage performance from
1977),
The Nutcracker (briefly in film from 1961 and
then at length with ballerina Merle Park in 1968),
Swan
Lake (two clips from a 1966 stage production and a 1977
performance with no less than TV superstar Miss Piggy) and
Giselle (1962
with a limpid but radiant Margot Fonteyn). Also included
are brief excerpts from
Don Quixote (1973), the Frederick
Ashton/Cecil Beaton
Marguerite & Armand (1977),
Cinderella (1978)
and, perhaps more challengingly – both for Nureyev and his
audience –
Apollo (1973), Glenn Tetley’s
Pierrot
Lunaire (1977) and
Aureole (1978). Throughout
it is abundantly clear that Nureyev’s energy, imagination
and willingness to test his body to its limit all combined
to make him the focus of every eye in the theatre.
Sadly, the film seems to tail off
rapidly towards its close, almost as though there was really
nothing more to say. Of course, there really was quite a
lot more to say. We all know that by 1991 there was a whole
side to the Nureyev story that was being skirted around nervously,
taking its lead from the dancer himself as he remained in
denial about his AIDS-related illness right up to the very
end of his life.
This film is, then, something of
a curiosity, telling us almost as much about the time it
was made as it does about its subject. Were it to be remade
today, it would no doubt adopt an entirely different tone
and approach. But, whether it did or did not, it could never
diminish the impact of the sheer talent and animal magnetism
that deservedly made Rudolf Nureyev the pre-eminent male
dancer of the second half of the twentieth century.
Rob
Maynard