{"id":7101,"date":"2007-10-02T12:08:15","date_gmt":"2007-10-02T16:08:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=7101"},"modified":"2015-12-28T09:09:00","modified_gmt":"2015-12-28T14:09:00","slug":"the-dancer-who-could-pause-in-mid-air","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=7101","title":{"rendered":"The Dancer Who Could Pause In Mid-Air:"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"rudolfnureyev2.jpg\"<\/p>\n

Joan Acocella writes:<\/p>\n

Almost everyone who describes Nureyev eventually compares him to an animal. They bore you to death with this, but it was true.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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

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

Example from the book review:<\/p>\n

But Ufa had an opera house, and, one New Year\u00e2\u0080\u0099s Eve, Nureyev\u00e2\u0080\u0099s 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 \u00e2\u0080\u009cThe Song of the Cranes,\u00e2\u0080\u009d a sort of Bashkirian \u00e2\u0080\u009cSwan Lake,\u00e2\u0080\u009d 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. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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Rudolf Nureyev and Margot Fonteyn<\/i><\/p>\n

Excerpt from book review<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The other great influence on him during these early years was Margot Fonteyn. In 1961, Fonteyn was the lead ballerina of England\u00e2\u0080\u0099s Royal Ballet\u00e2\u0080\u0094actually, the lead ballerina of Western ballet. Like Bruhn, she was Nureyev\u00e2\u0080\u0099s 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\u00e2\u0080\u0094indeed, the general public\u00e2\u0080\u0094suddenly 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 \u00e2\u0080\u009cdance boom\u00e2\u0080\u009d of the nineteen-sixties and seventies. They made the art more popular than it had ever been.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Can’t wait to read the biography.<\/p>\n

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