Western ballet in retrospect - Part 2
Elmo Fernando
Continued from last week
Rudolf Nureyev was born in a train and this has always symbolized his
rootlessness to him. He grew up in Tartary, in Bashkir east of the
Urals, obsessed with the Kirov Ballet School in far-off Leningrad and
determined to get there in spite of strenuous parental objections. “My
father was a peasant raising a family of many children.
The government gave him everything and he sacrificed his whole life
for Russia. He was the most honest man I ever met. At 17 late for a
dancer Nureyer finally won gruding admission to the Kirov. He made it
clear to the Kirove that it had caught a Tartar by the tail”. The
company fed me, taught me, thought for me”, he says “And in return they
owned me. I wanted to own myself Nureyev made a spectacular leap to
freedom.
Explosive times
|
Alexandra Ansanelli and Benjamin Millipied in Coppelia |
In 1961 during the Kirov Ballet’s Paris season, he avoided his
country men, found French friends and tasted the heady wine of the West.
It was only at Le Bourget airport from where the company was flying to
its London engagement that he felt something was wrong. Some of the
ballerinas were crying and looking at me.
They wouldn’t usually cry for me – they didn’t even like me. In
Paris, Nureyev was the apparition of Rousseau’s noble savage, innocent
of civilization’s taint. He had a primitive fear of injections, had
never been in a taxi and was described by actress Jeane Moreau as a
frightened wild animal.
He was a born outsider, even when six months later he came to London
at the invitation of the fabulous English ballerina Margot Fonteyn. He
lived in a succession of furnished rooms rejecting all possessions
except a rapidly record collections which he carted around like the
crown jewels of Czarist of Russia.
Of manners he hardly knew. He spent months to learn to say good
morning. Please and thank you took longer. It recalls the famous Russian
proverb if you live like the wolves you howl like the wolves”. Like a
torero or heavyweight champion wherever he went Nureyev was surrounded
by fawning admirers.
Yet he seems more alone than ever, his face both hunted by the
curious crowds. “I should probably miss it if they didn’t stare” he
says, “This is why I dance”. Further he says “Show people are those who
sacrifice themselves. Nureyev’s temperament is perverse and at times
explosive.
His emotions spin like a weather vane, to laughter to sullenness.
Sensitive and extremely vigilant. Perhaps he says things that are
deliberately misleading. His unfortunate trait is that he has to vilify
others for one’s survival. So he fled to the West and for two years none
knew where he was.
Perhaps the most important feature of 1948, the year in which the
company reached full international status. This was the year Fonteyn
emerged as an amazing prime ballerina. Markova and Dolin appeared with
the company as guest artistes in a memorable series of magnificent
performances in June. Fonteyn was away in Paris at the time. She
returned and in performances of Swan Lake and the Sleeping Beauty,
revealing an extremely new assurance, authority and technique.
In 1935 Alicia Markova and Anton Dolin appeared with the company as
guest artistes in a memorable series of magnificent performances of The
Haunted Ballroom and The Rake’s Progress. The most important feature of
1948, the year which the company reached full international status. The
most striking feature was Michael Some’s Summer Interlude which was
awaiting critical acclaim.
The 1950-51 season opened with the creation of Balanchine’s Trumpet
Concert’s the company’s first ballet by a distinguished foreign
choreographer. Cranko the same year produced Pastorale, the popular
Pineapple Poll. It was announced that the company would make a long and
extensive tour of North America and towards the end of 1951, they held a
farewell season during which the full length Coppelia and a new version
of Casse Noisette by Ashton were added to the repertory. |
