The Dancer Who Could Pause In Mid-Air:

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Joan Acocella writes:

Almost everyone who describes Nureyev eventually compares him to an animal. They bore you to death with this, but it was true.

New biography of Rudolf Nureyev is out – and I must read it. All 700 pages! (Here’s a bit I wrote about Nureyev and his famous comment about pausing in mid-air)

Review of the new biography here by the wonderful dance critic for The New Yorker, Joan Acocella. I rarely go to the ballet, but for whatever reason; dancer biographies and writing about dancers (good writing) fascinates me.

Example from the book review:

But Ufa had an opera house, and, one New Year’s Eve, Nureyev’s mother bought a single ticket to the ballet and sneaked her whole family in, including the seven-year-old Rudolf. He later said that it was that night, as he watched “The Song of the Cranes,” a sort of Bashkirian “Swan Lake,” that he received the call. In dance biographies, one hears suspiciously often of these thunderclaps, but I think they should be credited if they are soon followed by intense study.

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Rudolf Nureyev and Margot Fonteyn

Excerpt from book review:

The other great influence on him during these early years was Margot Fonteyn. In 1961, Fonteyn was the lead ballerina of England’s Royal Ballet—actually, the lead ballerina of Western ballet. Like Bruhn, she was Nureyev’s opposite: seemly, understated. He longed to dance with her, but whereas he was twenty-three she was forty-two, and ready to retire. She did perform with him, however, and something happened between them. He regalvanized her, and for the next decade they enjoyed what was probably the most famous partnership in twentieth-century ballet. Teen-agers, celebrity hounds—indeed, the general public—suddenly began lining up to buy tickets to the ballet. At the end of the show, they would howl, and tear their programs into confetti to throw at their idols, whom they summoned back for twenty, twenty-five, curtain calls. The Fonteyn-Nureyev phenomenon was a major contributor to the “dance boom” of the nineteen-sixties and seventies. They made the art more popular than it had ever been.

Can’t wait to read the biography.

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3 Responses to The Dancer Who Could Pause In Mid-Air:

  1. EMS says:

    So interesting! I took a dance history class my last semester in college (even though I haven’t “danced” since I was six) and discovered the fascinating and difficult world of dance writing. A good dance critique can make me like a dance more because it makes me think, especially if I disagree with the writer.
    It’s interesting all those writers compared Nureyev to an animal. Dance writing in general does rely very heavily on metaphore since dancing is a nonverbal, physical expression and art.

  2. red says:

    Emily – really interesting, right? That’s the part of the review that fascinated me: that the writer of the biography can tell you the difference, in words, between a Russian jete and a Danish jete – or whatever. Because there is a difference – but how do you WRITE about such things??

  3. red says:

    By the way – a dance history class sounds very interesting!!

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