The rebellious

His passage to the West made him a legend: in 1961, escaping the members of the KGB at Le Bourget airport after a tour of the Kirov (current Mariinsky of Saint Petersburg) of which he was the one of the stars, the 23-year-old dancer, says to a French officer: "I would like to stay in your country".

Born to poor Muslim Tatar parents, he experienced hunger in Ufa, in western Russia.

"He was a rebel, he fought all his life, starting with his opposition to his father who did not want his son to dance," said AFP Elisabeth Platel, director of the Dance School of the Paris Opera and who was one of its regular dancers.

"But he was not interested in politics, he especially wanted to live his artistic and sexual freedom", explains Ariane Dollfus, author of a biography of the dancer, in reference to his homosexuality.

In Russia, he was rehabilitated only after his death.

ballet rockstar

"He was an extraordinary dancer, a ballet star like there are no more, a rockstar", summarizes Manuel Legris, named star at 21 in 1986 by Nureyev.

At La Scala in Milan, where Legris has been director of the Ballet for a year, and at the Vienna Opera, where he was director of dance just before, Nureyev, who has reworked classics for these two houses, "is revered and his name alone is enough to fill the room," he said.

"He just had to come on stage and that was it," he recalls.

"He didn't do 14 pirouettes like we do today but there was magic."

Rudolf Nureyev and prima ballerina Merle Park (centre) during a rehearsal of Stravinsky's ballet "Apollon Musagète" in June 1974 at the Palais des Sports de la Porte de Versailles in Paris © - / AFP

From New York to London, fans greeted her like a pop star.

At the premiere of his production of "Swan Lake" in Vienna, there were 89 curtain ups, a Guinness Book record.

He will form a mythical dance couple with the great lady of British ballet Margot Fonteyn, despite their age difference (she is in her forties, he is in her twenties).

"It was madness. People came to see a ballet star but he went beyond the strict framework of dance," says Ms. Dollfus.

"If he became an icon of the 20th century - he is one of the most photographed artists of his time - it is because he married his time", from the Cold War to the AIDS years, which he died at age 54 in 1993.

Volcanic

"He was unfiltered. He was someone who had psychic weaknesses and therefore he could be verbally and physically violent," says Ms. Dollfus.

"Towards the end of his career, he had kicked a dancer, it ended in a trial".

“His remarks were quite abrupt, he was cash, we were full of teeth … He would not have survived social networks”, underlines Manuel Legris.

At the Opera, where he was dance director in the 1980s, he dismissed established stars for the benefit of young people and it is no coincidence that Patrick Dupond, star of French ballet, left the group during his tenure. .

"There could not be two suns," notes Ariane Dollfus.

Rudolf Nureyev arrives in Moscow on November 14, 1987, after 26 years of absence, to go to the bedside of his seriously ill mother © - / AFP

The troupe, to which he gave international notoriety, did not always give him gifts, with in particular a memorable strike on the day of the premiere of his "Sleeping Beauty".

iron discipline

In the studio or on stage, however, he was an example for dancers, in particular because of his discipline and his high standards.

"He worked like crazy and, even if he went out late at night, the next morning he was at the bar", says Manuel Legris, who is one of the "children of Nureyev", a golden generation of young dancers from the 'Opera like Sylvie Guillem or Laurent Hilaire.

"He allowed us madness while being disciplined", testifies Elisabeth Platel.

"He would never have criticized us if we fell on stage, but was very unhappy if we tried to cheat so as not to fall. It built us, we feel like guardians of his heritage," she adds.

- The equal of the ballerina

"He revolutionized the place of the male dancer in ballet, where the dancer is queen", according to Ms. Dollfus, giving more depth, for example, to the characters of princes.

"Before him, the dancers were forced to be very discreet, very stiff. He really loosened the male dancer", indicates the biographer.

© 2023 AFP