Rudolf Nureyev: The Life Story Behind the Ballet Rebel

Rudolf Nureyev did not dance like a polite guest in a palace. He danced like a fire that had been lit in the middle of the room, and everyone in the audience could feel the heat. Where other male dancers of his time were content to lift the ballerina, stand still, and look handsome, Nureyev wanted to move, to jump, to turn, and to be the centre of the story. He brought a wild, animal energy to classical ballet, and he changed what people expected from a man on a ballet stage. Before him, the male dancer was often a support act. After him, he could be the star.

He was born on 17 March 1938 on a train travelling across Siberia, to a Tatar family, and he grew up in poverty in the Soviet Union, far from the great theatres of Leningrad and Moscow. He did not start ballet until he was much older than most dancers, and he was not trained in the smooth, polished way that the great schools produced. He learned fast, he worked with a fury that frightened his teachers, and he arrived at the Kirov Ballet in Leningrad as a force of nature. He was brilliant, difficult, and impossible to ignore, and within a few years he was the most talked-about dancer in the Soviet Union.

Then, in June 1961, during a tour in Paris, he did what no Soviet dancer of his fame had done before: he refused to return home. At Le Bourget airport, with Soviet officials trying to pull him onto a plane to Moscow, he broke away and asked the French police for asylum. It was a scene of chaos and courage, and it was reported around the world. He was twenty-three years old, and he had just given up his country for the chance to dance freely. The rest of his life was lived in the West, on the great stages of London, New York, and Paris, and he never went home again.

Born on a Train and Raised in Hard Times

Rudolf Khametovich Nureyev was born on 17 March 1938 on a train travelling through Siberia, while his mother was on her way to join his father, who was a Soviet army officer serving in the Far East. The family was Tatar, a Muslim people from the region of Russia around Kazan, and they were poor. Nureyev grew up in the city of Ufa, in a small house shared with other families, and his childhood was shaped by hunger, cold, and the hardships of life in the Soviet Union after the Second World War. There was no ballet in his early life, and there was no money for lessons. He was a boy who ran, climbed, and fought, and who had a physical energy that his family did not know what to do with.

He first saw ballet when he was a child, at a local theatre in Ufa, and he was struck by the beauty of it, by the music, the costumes, and the way the dancers moved. It was a world that seemed far from his own, a world of light and grace in a life that was often dark and hard. He began to take folk dance lessons, and then ballet lessons, and his teachers saw that he had a natural gift for movement, even though he had started late. He was not a delicate child. He was strong, quick, and stubborn, and he learned steps by watching and copying, and by practising until his body could do what his mind wanted.

When he was seventeen, he was accepted into the Vaganova School in Leningrad, the great ballet school, but he was older than the other students and he had missed years of training. The teachers were not sure what to do with him. He did not have the smooth, finished technique of a boy who had trained since childhood, and he did not always follow the rules. He argued with teachers, he practised on his own, and he learned by watching the older dancers in the Kirov company. It was a difficult time, but it was also the time when he formed his style: not polished and perfect, but passionate, dramatic, and full of life.

He graduated from the Vaganova School in 1958, and he joined the Kirov Ballet, the company of the Mariinsky Theatre in Leningrad. He was twenty years old, and he was already different from the other male dancers. He danced with a fire that made audiences sit up, and he danced the great roles with a hunger that was almost frightening. The Kirov had never seen a dancer quite like him, and the audiences loved him for it, even when the company’s directors found him difficult to manage.

The Kirov, Stardom, and a Dancer Who Would Not Obey

At the Kirov, Nureyev quickly became a star. He danced the leading male roles in Swan Lake, The Sleeping Beauty, Giselle, and Don Quixote, and he brought a new kind of energy to them. In the old style, the male dancer was a prince: noble, calm, and controlled. Nureyev was a prince who was also a wild animal, and the audience could feel the difference. He jumped higher, he turned faster, and he danced as if his life depended on it, because in a way it did. Ballet was his escape from poverty, and he was not going to waste it by dancing politely.

His success also brought him into conflict with the Kirov’s management and with the Soviet authorities. He was a difficult man to control. He wanted to dance the roles he chose, he wanted to work with the choreographers he admired, and he wanted to travel and to see the world. The Soviet system did not work that way. Dancers were expected to obey, to follow the repertoire, and to accept the decisions of the company. Nureyev did not obey easily. He argued, he refused, and he made enemies among the people who ran the company. He was also watched by the security services, who were suspicious of a dancer who was too popular, too independent, and too interested in the West.

He was allowed to travel with the Kirov on tours to the West, and each tour made the problem worse, because each time he saw what life was like outside the Soviet Union, he wanted more of it. He saw dancers in Paris and London who chose their own work, who earned good money, and who lived freely, and he compared that life with his own, where every decision was made for him. He began to think about leaving, and he began to talk to people in the West about what would happen if he did. It was a dangerous thought, and he knew it, because a dancer who defected could never go home, and his family would suffer for his choice.

In the spring of 1961, the Kirov went on tour to Paris, and Nureyev danced there to great acclaim. The French audiences loved him, the critics praised him, and he was invited to stay and dance with Western companies. The Soviet authorities, worried that he might not return, decided to send him back to Moscow early, away from the rest of the company, which was going on to London. That decision forced his hand. If he went back to Moscow, he might never be allowed to travel again. If he stayed, he would be free, but he would never see his home again. He chose freedom.

The Leap at Le Bourget Airport

On 16 June 1961, at Le Bourget airport outside Paris, Nureyev made his escape. The Kirov’s officials told him that he was to fly to Moscow, not to London with the rest of the company, and they tried to put him on the plane. Nureyev, realising what was happening, broke away from them and ran to the French police in the airport, asking for political asylum. It was a chaotic scene, with officials shouting, police officers stepping in, and a young dancer standing in the middle of it all, refusing to move. The French police protected him, and he was granted asylum. The news spread around the world within hours, and the photograph of the young dancer who had jumped to freedom became famous.

He was twenty-three years old, and he had nothing. He had no home, no money, and no job, and he could not go back to the Soviet Union. What he had was his talent, and the West wanted it. Ballet companies in London, Paris, and New York offered him work, and audiences wanted to see the dancer who had risked everything for his art. He chose to base himself in London, where he joined the Royal Ballet as a guest artist, and where he formed the most famous partnership of his life, with the English ballerina Margot Fonteyn.

The defection made him a political symbol, like Baryshnikov would become thirteen years later, but Nureyev was not interested in politics. He was interested in dancing, and he wanted to dance as much as possible, with as many partners as possible, in as many countries as possible. He was a restless man, and the freedom he had won suited his restlessness perfectly. He could travel, he could choose, and he could work with anyone he wanted, and he did all of those things, at a pace that exhausted everyone around him.

His family in the Soviet Union suffered for his choice, as he had feared they would. His mother, whom he loved deeply, was not allowed to travel to see him, and he did not see her again until many years later, when she was dying and the Soviet authorities finally allowed her to visit him in Paris. It was a painful reunion, and it was a reminder that freedom, however precious, has a price, and that the price is often paid by the people who stay behind.

Margot Fonteyn and the Partnership the World Loved

In London, Nureyev found a partner who would change his life: Dame Margot Fonteyn, the prima ballerina of the Royal Ballet, who was nineteen years older than him and who was already a legend. When they first danced together, in Giselle in 1962, the audience response was extraordinary. Fonteyn was graceful, elegant, and mature, and Nureyev was young, wild, and passionate, and together they created a chemistry that no one had seen before. The audience stood and cheered, the curtain calls went on for a long time, and the partnership became the most famous in ballet.

They danced together for many years, in Swan Lake, in Romeo and Juliet, in Marguerite and Armand, a ballet created for them by the choreographer Frederick Ashton, and in many other works. Fonteyn, who had been thinking of retiring, found a new life in her dancing with Nureyev, and Nureyev found a partner who could match his intensity and who could teach him about style, line, and grace. They were an unlikely pair, a young Tatar from Siberia and an elegant English ballerina, but on stage they were perfect together, and the world loved them for it.

The partnership also made Nureyev a star in the West in a way that no male dancer had been before. He was on the cover of magazines, he was photographed by the great photographers, and he was known to people who had never seen a ballet. He was handsome, he was exotic, and he was exciting, and he enjoyed the fame. He lived a glamorous life in London and Paris, he bought a beautiful home, he collected art, and he travelled the world, dancing with companies in many countries. He was the first ballet dancer to become a true international celebrity.

He also used his fame to change ballet itself. He insisted that male dancers should have more to do, that they should dance with the same passion and the same technical brilliance as the ballerinas, and that they should be the centre of the story, not just the support. He created new versions of the great classical ballets, including Don Quixote, Swan Lake, and The Sleeping Beauty, and his versions gave the male roles more dancing, more drama, and more importance. Those versions are still performed today, and they are a lasting part of his legacy.

Director, Traveller, and a Life Lived at Full Speed

In the 1970s and 1980s, Nureyev continued to dance, even as he grew older and his body began to show the strain of a career that had been lived at full speed. He danced with companies around the world, he choreographed, and he took on the job of artistic director of the Paris Opera Ballet in 1983, a position he held until 1989. At the Paris Opera, he tried to raise the standard of the company, to bring in new dancers, and to give the male dancers more prominence, just as he had done in his own career. It was a difficult job, and he was a difficult director, demanding, impatient, and unwilling to accept anything less than the best.

He also lived a life that was, by the standards of the time, open and bold. He was gay, and he did not hide it in the way that many public figures of his generation felt they had to. He had relationships, he lived as he wanted, and he refused to apologise for who he was. That openness was brave in the 1960s and 1970s, when homosexuality was still illegal in many countries and when public figures could lose their careers for being honest about their lives. Nureyev did not lose his career. He was too famous, too talented, and too loved by audiences for anyone to stop him, and his openness helped other dancers to be more honest about their own lives.

His health began to fail in the 1980s. He had contracted HIV, and in the years that followed he developed AIDS, at a time when the disease was poorly understood and there was no effective treatment. He kept dancing for as long as he could, and he kept working, even when he was ill, because work was the centre of his life. He conducted orchestras, he directed, and he appeared on stage in small roles, refusing to stop until his body would no longer allow it. He died on 6 January 1993 in Paris, at the age of fifty-four, and he was buried in a Russian cemetery outside the city, in a grave covered by a beautiful mosaic that looks like a carpet, a fitting resting place for a dancer who had lived so colourfully.

His legacy is enormous. He changed the role of the male dancer, he brought ballet to a wider audience, and he showed that a dancer could be a star, a celebrity, and an artist at the same time. He also showed that a person could leave everything behind for freedom, and that the freedom was worth the price, even when the price was high. The ballets he created are still danced, the partnership with Fonteyn is still remembered as one of the greatest in history, and the image of the young man running to freedom at Le Bourget airport is still one of the most powerful images of the Cold War.

The Dancer Who Remade the Classics

Nureyev was not content to dance the great ballets as they had always been danced, and in the 1960s and 1970s he began to create his own versions of them, staging new productions of Don Quixote, Swan Lake, The Sleeping Beauty, and Romeo and Juliet for companies in London, Vienna, and Paris. His versions gave the male dancer far more to do than the old versions had, with longer solos, harder jumps, and more dramatic scenes, and they gave the story a new energy, as if the prince had finally been allowed to speak for himself. Some traditionalists disliked the changes, and they said that Nureyev was showing off, but audiences loved the new versions, because they were exciting, and because they made the old stories feel alive again. His Don Quixote, in particular, with its Spanish colour, its leaps, and its humour, became a favourite of companies around the world, and it is still performed today, with dancers who never met Nureyev still dancing the steps he created.

He also choreographed new works, and he worked with dancers in many countries, from Australia to Canada, from Italy to America, and he treated every company he visited as a place to learn, as well as a place to teach. He was a demanding teacher, and he expected his dancers to work as hard as he had worked, to practise until their legs ached, and to give everything they had on stage. Some dancers found him frightening, and some found him inspiring, and most found him both, because he was a man who asked for perfection and who gave perfection in return. His stagings of the classics remain his most lasting contribution to ballet as a craft, because they changed the repertoire itself, and they gave male dancers a repertoire that was worthy of their talent.

A Celebrity, a Collector, and a Man of the World

Away from the stage, Nureyev lived a glamorous life that was unlike the life of any dancer before him. He bought beautiful homes in London and in Paris, he collected paintings, carpets, and furniture, and he filled his houses with objects from around the world, from Turkish carpets to Italian paintings, creating rooms that were as colourful and as dramatic as his dancing. He loved beauty in all its forms, and he spent his money on it freely, because he had earned it, and because he believed that a dancer who had given so much to the world deserved to live beautifully. His homes were famous, and they were photographed for magazines, and they became a part of his legend, as much as his jumps and his partnerships.

He was also a fashion figure, photographed by the great photographers of the day, and he was known for his style, his dark hair, his strong face, and his elegant clothes. He moved in the world of artists, writers, and musicians, and he was friends with people like the choreographer Frederick Ashton, the designer Cecil Beaton, and the writer Truman Capote, and he was a guest at parties in London, Paris, and New York. He was the first ballet dancer to be a true celebrity, a person whose name was known to people who had never seen a ballet, and he enjoyed that fame, even as he knew that it could be a burden, and that it could distract from the work itself. He never let the fame stop the work, and he worked until his body would no longer allow it, because work was the centre of his life, and because the stage was the place where he felt most himself.

My Take:

I think Rudolf Nureyev is the most exciting dancer I have ever read about, and I do not mean exciting in a polite way. I mean exciting in the way a storm is exciting, or a wild animal is exciting: you watch him because you do not know what he will do next, and because you can feel the energy coming off the stage. Other dancers I have read about were beautiful, or graceful, or perfect, but Nureyev was alive in a different way. He danced as if he were fighting for his life, and in a way he was, because ballet was the thing that had saved him from poverty, and he was never going to dance it politely or safely. That hunger is what I love about him most.

What strikes me first is how late he started, and how little that mattered. Most great dancers begin when they are five or six years old, and they spend their childhood in a studio, learning the positions one by one. Nureyev began much later, he learned by watching and copying, and he arrived at the great school in Leningrad as a rough, unfinished dancer who argued with his teachers. I find that encouraging, because it tells me that talent is not only about starting early. It is about wanting something so much that you are willing to work harder than everyone else to catch up, and Nureyev worked harder than anyone. He did not have the perfect training, but he had the perfect hunger, and the hunger won.

The airport scene at Le Bourget is the moment I keep coming back to, because it is so dramatic and so human. He was twenty-three, he was being pushed towards a plane that would take him back to Moscow, and he had to decide in a few seconds whether to obey or to run. He ran. He ran to the French police, he asked for asylum, and he changed his life in a single moment. I try to imagine the fear in that moment, and the courage it took to do it in front of everyone, with officials shouting and people watching. It is easy to call it heroic from a distance, but in that moment it must have been terrifying, and I admire him for doing it anyway. He chose freedom when freedom was not safe, and that choice defined everything that came after.

I also think about the price he paid, because it is easy to forget that part when the story is told as a triumph. He never saw his mother again until she was dying, and he never went home. He lived in London and Paris, he was famous and rich, but he was also an exile, a man without a country, and that is a lonely thing to be. He had friends, he had lovers, he had audiences who adored him, but he did not have a home in the way most of us understand it. I think that loneliness is part of why he danced so fiercely, because the stage was the one place where he belonged completely, and where no one could tell him he did not belong.

His partnership with Margot Fonteyn is one of the most beautiful parts of his story, and I love it because it was so unlikely. She was nineteen years older, she was English and elegant, he was young and wild, and together they made something that neither of them could have made alone. She taught him grace, he taught her passion, and the audience could see the love between them on stage, even though it was not a romantic love in the usual sense. It was a partnership of two artists who respected each other and who made each other better. I think that is the best kind of partnership, in art or in life: two people who are different, who bring different gifts, and who create something together that is bigger than either of them.

I think Nureyev changed ballet for men in a way that cannot be overstated. Before him, the male dancer was often a background figure, a prince who lifted the ballerina and then stood aside while she danced. Nureyev refused to stand aside. He wanted to jump, to turn, to dance, and to be watched, and he proved that an audience would watch a man dance with the same excitement that they watched a woman. Every male dancer today who is a star in his own right, who has solos and dramatic roles, owes something to Nureyev, because he was the one who proved it could be done. He did not ask for permission. He just danced, and the audience followed him.

I also admire his openness about his life, because it was brave in a time when it was not safe to be open. He was gay, and he lived as he wanted, and he did not hide it or apologise for it, at a time when many public figures were forced to live a lie. That honesty cost him nothing in the end, because his talent was too great for anyone to take away, but it must have taken courage, and it helped other people to be honest too. I think that is an important part of his legacy, and it is one that goes beyond ballet. He showed that a great artist could be himself, completely, and that the world would love him for it, not in spite of it.

His later years are the saddest part of the story, and I want to be honest about them. He became ill with HIV and then AIDS, at a time when there was no good treatment, and he kept working even as his body failed him. He danced when he should have rested, he directed when he was tired, and he refused to stop until he could not go on. I find that both inspiring and heartbreaking, because it shows a man who could not imagine a life without work, and who kept working even when work was hurting him. I wish he had rested more, and I wish the medicine of the time had been better, but I also understand why he did not stop. The stage was his home, and he was not ready to leave it.

I think his time as director of the Paris Opera Ballet shows the same strengths and the same problems as his dancing. He was demanding, he wanted the best, and he did not accept excuses, and that made the company better, but it also made him difficult to work with. He was not a patient manager, and he was not a politician, and running a big company needs patience and politics. I do not see that as a failure. I see it as a man who was a great dancer trying to do a different job, and doing it in the only way he knew how: with passion and with high standards. The company was better for having him, even if the years were stormy.

If I have a criticism, it is that Nureyev could be selfish, and that his hunger for the stage sometimes left little room for other people. He wanted the best roles, the best partners, and the most applause, and he did not always share the stage gracefully. That is not a terrible flaw in a dancer, because the stage is a competitive place, and ambition is part of what makes a great artist, but it is a flaw, and it meant that some of the people around him felt used or overlooked. I say this not to diminish him, but because a full picture includes the difficult parts. He was not a saint. He was a wild, brilliant, difficult man, and the world loved him for the wildness as much as for the brilliance.

I also think about the audiences who saw him for the first time, in London in 1962, when he danced Giselle with Fonteyn, and who stood and cheered for so long that the curtain calls seemed to go on forever. Those audiences had come to see a ballerina, and they left having seen a partnership, and a male dancer who was her equal in every way. That is a rare thing in ballet, and it is a thing that Nureyev made possible, not only for himself, but for every male dancer who came after him. When I watch a male dancer today, leaping across a stage, taking a bow to applause that is meant for him alone, I think of Nureyev, and of the night in London when the audience first understood that a man could be the star of a ballet.

Another thought that stays with me is about his restlessness, and how it was both a gift and a curse. He could not stay in one place, he could not stay with one company, and he could not stay with one style, and that restlessness made him great, because it made him try everything, and it made him see the world, and it made him a citizen of ballet, not of one country. But it also made him lonely, because a man who is always moving never quite belongs anywhere, and Nureyev, for all his homes and his friends, was a man without a country, a man who had left his home and could never go back. I think that loneliness is in his dancing, in the fierceness of it, in the way he danced as if he were trying to prove that he belonged, and I find that both beautiful and sad.

I think about the young dancers in Russia today, who watch videos of Nureyev and dream of dancing like him, and I wonder what they think of his choice to leave. Some of them may think he was a traitor, and some may think he was a hero, and most probably think a little of both, because his story is complicated, and because leaving your country is never a simple thing. I do not think we should judge him simply. He left because he wanted to dance freely, and because he could not dance freely at home, and that is a reason that any artist can understand. He paid for it, with exile, with loneliness, and with the loss of his mother, and he lived with that price for the rest of his life. That is not a simple story, and it is not a story with a simple moral, and that is why it is worth telling in full.

Finally, I want to say something about the way he danced, because it is the thing that will last longest. His jumps, his turns, and his passion are on film, and they can still be watched today, by anyone with a screen, and they still look extraordinary, even fifty years later. Ballet has changed since Nureyev, and dancers today are stronger, and more athletic, and more technically perfect, but they are not more exciting, and they are not more alive, than Nureyev was at his best. That aliveness, that fire, is the thing that cannot be taught, and it is the thing that makes a dancer great. Nureyev had it, and he shared it, and the world is richer because he did.

What I take from his life is a lesson about not waiting for permission. Nureyev did not wait for the Kirov to give him the roles he wanted. He did not wait for the Soviet Union to give him freedom. He did not wait for the ballet world to give men bigger parts. He took what he wanted, by dancing brilliantly, by running to freedom, and by creating the roles himself. That is a lesson for anyone who feels stuck in a system that does not see them: do not wait for the system to change. Change your own life, even if it is frightening, even if it costs you, because the life on the other side of that choice might be the life you were meant to live. Nureyev lived that lesson, and he paid for it, and he danced through it, and that is why I will never forget him. I also think about the dancers who came after Nureyev, and about the way they talk about him, with a mixture of awe and fear, because he set a standard that was almost impossible to reach, and because he showed them what a male dancer could be. He was not an easy man to follow, and he was not an easy man to work with, but he was a man who changed the art, and who made it possible for male dancers to be stars, and that is a legacy that every male dancer today carries, whether he knows it or not.

Frequently Asked Questions

Where was Rudolf Nureyev born?

Rudolf Nureyev was born on 17 March 1938 on a train travelling through Siberia, to a Tatar family. He grew up in Ufa in the Soviet Union, in poverty, and he did not begin serious ballet training until he was much older than most dancers.

How did Nureyev defect to the West?

During a Kirov Ballet tour to Paris in June 1961, Soviet officials tried to send him back to Moscow instead of letting him travel on to London. At Le Bourget airport on 16 June 1961 he broke away from the officials, ran to the French police, and asked for political asylum, which was granted.

Who was Margot Fonteyn and why was their partnership famous?

Margot Fonteyn was the prima ballerina of the Royal Ballet in London, nineteen years older than Nureyev. They first danced Giselle together in 1962, and their partnership became the most famous in ballet, with audiences cheering them in Swan Lake, Romeo and Juliet, and Marguerite and Armand.

How did Nureyev change the role of the male dancer?

Before Nureyev, male dancers were often supporting figures who lifted the ballerina and stood aside. Nureyev danced with passion, huge jumps, and dramatic solos, and he created new versions of the great ballets that gave male roles more dancing and more importance, making the male dancer a star in his own right.

What did Nureyev do in his later years?

He continued to dance around the world, choreographed, and from 1983 to 1989 he was artistic director of the Paris Opera Ballet. He also conducted orchestras and performed in small roles, working until his health no longer allowed it.

When did Rudolf Nureyev die?

Rudolf Nureyev died on 6 January 1993 in Paris, at the age of fifty-four, after living with HIV and AIDS. He was buried in a Russian cemetery outside Paris, in a grave covered by a mosaic designed to look like a carpet.