Nureyev : The Life (9780307807342)

by Kavanagh, Julie

  To outsiders it seemed as if the Goslings were putting themselves “almost masochistically at [Rudolf’s] disposal,” but their close friend, Nigel’s editor Tristram Holland, insists that this was not the case. “It wasn’t hugely onerous for them. Maude didn’t work, and I suspect it was a bit of a focus in their lives—all of it was slightly good fun, Nigel getting in his Jaguar and rumbling off to Fife Road.” But there were times when Nigel in particular was deeply affected by problems in Rudolf’s life. In mid-May, when the dancer injured his leg, resulting in the cancellation of the Washington season, Nigel was made so distraught by the news (one rumor had hinted at the possibility of a blood clot) that he hardly slept that night and got up to be physically sick. He may have seemed on the surface a model of English imperturbability, but friends say that he internalized his anxieties “to an incredible degree.” He tried to make light of things (“Cluck cluck … here I go like an old hen”), but Rudolf’s friendship was so important to him that anything threatening it became a major concern. In the letter he wrote Rudolf the day after the injury scare, he was also fretting about an article he had written. “I am terrified by the idea that you might think I was being even the tiniest bit of a traitor and cashing in your trust in my discretion.… It is so easy to destroy something by mistake.”

  By late May Nigel’s main worry was that the combination of domestic problems and dwindling work prospects—“as the Royal B slowly (& perhaps naturally) squeezes him out”—would force Rudolf to leave London altogether. In fact, he could not have been more mistaken. For the past two years, since the New Statesman and Nation published its long attack on Kenneth MacMillan’s directorship (beginning a campaign of perniciously personal criticism), Rudolf’s name had been among those mentioned as MacMillan’s likely successor. Even Lincoln Kirstein, once the dancer’s most ferocious adversary, was backing him, as Erik discovered when they dined together in New York. “He told me that MacMillan is being fired and you were going to be asked to direct the Royal Ballet. I hope so for them and you.” Kirstein’s own letter to Richard Buckle dated May 21 confirmed this as much more than hearsay. “I spent the whole night with John Tooley who is asking Nureyev to head the Royal Ballet; the company is demoralized; Kenneth is as impotent as Nixon … please don’t talk about Nureyev, etc, until you hear it. I don’t know whether he will accept.”

  Tooley’s offer was, in fact, conditional, requiring the star drastically to reduce his number of performances. To Rudolf this was unthinkable. He had always believed that the more often he appeared, the better he performed, and the huge success of his debuts that season in Ashton’s La Fille mal gardée and MacMillan’s Manon had convinced him that his best years were still to come.* He was born to be a performer, not a spectator, he later told The Observer’s Lynn Barber. “When I don’t dance, I can’t bear to watch ANY ballet.” Nigel, believing that Rudolf had about thirty years of directing ahead of him but only three of dancing, told him that he would “be crazy” to accept the position. But Rudolf anyway felt much too daunted then by the prospect of taking on a national company. “It’s too big. It directs itself.… It would be terribly complicated—to take care of them, to be tied to them—it’s another family.” The answer, he decided, was to create a small family of his own.

  In June he launched his first “Nureyev and Friends” venture at the Palais des Sports in Paris since his Béjart experience had proved that he had the drawing power to fill a massive space. This “la première ‘one-man show’ de la danse” would introduce the work of choreographers little known to the French general public—Balanchine, Taylor, Limón, Bournonville—in a chamber recital of Rudolf’s favorite repertory. Among the “Friends” were Merle Park and two Opéra étoiles, Wilfride Piollet and her husband, Jean Guizerix, whom Rudolf had chosen for their ability to be equally at ease in classical and contemporary styles. The big surprise was the prominence Rudolf gave to a corps de ballet dancer to star with him in Aureole. Charles Jude was the student he had tried to befriend on the Monte Carlo beach in the summer of ’69, and, five years later, during the Louvre Festival’s open-air performances, he had suddenly spotted the twenty-one-year-old onstage among the Prince’s friends. “Ah, c’est vous!” he had exclaimed aloud, and at the end of the performance, as he exited into the wings after his final call, Rudolf had given all the flowers in his arms to Charles.

  For a young dancer who was then just one of the Opéra Comique extras brought in to swell the ranks of the festival’s corps, Rudolf’s attention was as embarrassing as it was flattering. And when Douce François, in the role of go-between, invited him to have breakfast with Rudolf at the Ritz the following morning, Charles, once again, felt disinclined to accept. “I was so timid. But Douce was very kind to me and made me understand how lucky I was to have Rudolf’s interest.” At Maxim’s soon afterward he joined a long table of people waiting for the star to take the place d’honneur, but when Rudolf swept into the restaurant, he reshuffled everyone around so that he could sit beside Charles. They “talked à deux” throughout the evening, Rudolf tenderly feeding the dancer alternate forkfuls from his plate of beef Stroganoff. “He wanted to know everything about me. I told him how my family had left Vietnam in ’66 because of the war, and we talked about my work and his work, but I felt very uncomfortable because I could see the others—‘toute la clique Parisienne’—were not at all happy.”

  This was the group that dined with Rudolf almost every night, usually at Le Sept, the chic restaurant-discotheque in the rue Saint-Anne’s gay quarter. Among Rudolf’s clique was a very beautiful girl—“one of the last courtesans in the corps de ballet”; a pianist from the Opéra, Elisabeth (“Babette”) Cooper, who, like Douce, often acted as a pander; and a photographer, Jacques Loyau. “Present at all the great moments in dance,” Jacques had got to know the dancer in London in the early sixties, when Rudolf had singled him out among the crowd and taken him to dinner. A man of culture with a louche flip side to match Rudolf’s own, Jacques was not only an amiable accomplice in the public gardens and “les bas fonds” of Paris and London, he went out of his way to indulge Rudolf’s obsession with boys. Letters would arrive advertising possible conquests such as, “un joli et typiquement voyou anglais, en blouson noir, très gentil, il fait et se laissé faire absolument tout pour un prix forfaitaire de 100 Fs pour deux.” In addition, Jacques had a studio on the rue Dauphine, which he claims to have kept uniquely for “les parties fines, les orgies,” once presenting Rudolf with a harem of six youths, each so enticing that he could not decide which to take on first.

  But it was Charles with whom Rudolf wanted to spend every one of his evenings during those two weeks in Paris. “You and I are two of a kind,” he told him. “We are both alienated from our own country.” And in the dancer’s Eastern features and feline plastique, Rudolf saw the reflection of his younger self, for him the inevitable trigger of attraction. Now, a year later, during their Aureole performances, he had declared his feelings for the first time. “I told him that I wasn’t at all interested; I was living with someone then,” said Charles, remembering how “very quickly” Rudolf was able to accept his heterosexuality, his attitude seemingly unchanged by rejection. They kept in touch by telephone, the older dancer urging the younger to read widely and educate himself by seeing as many films, plays, and exhibitions as he could. “He was very protective and always worrying about my future.” From time to time Rudolf would inquire half mockingly, “Are you still with women?” perfectly aware that the only solution was to find a surrogate—“un type asiatique”* —which Jacques Loyau would be more than happy to provide.

  Two weeks later in Milan, Rudolf was telephoned early one morning by Nigel informing him that Misha Baryshnikov had defected. The dancer had been on tour in Canada with a small troupe of Russians when he made his escape to a safe house, spending his first days of freedom with Sergiu Stefanschi and Karen Kain. Sounding not in the least surprised, Rudolf laughed and said, “I was told he was intending it.” N
ext came a call from Armen Bali’s daughter in San Francisco. “There’s somebody by the name of Baryshnikov in Canada who’s looking for you,” said Jeannette, who had not yet read any of the press coverage about the Kirov’s latest renegade. Sending a message for the dancer to call him and reverse the charges, Rudolf then heard from Misha himself, dismissing his polite inquiry of “How are you?” with, “Okay. But the real question is, ‘How are you?’ ” They arranged to see each other in New York where, in July, Rudolf would be appearing with the Canadians at the Met, and Baryshnikov would make his American debut at the State Theater across the plaza.

  It was Jeannette who accompanied Misha to Rudolf’s first night, and hearing applause as they entered Lincoln Center, she turned around, thinking that “someone like Jackie Kennedy” must just have walked in. She was wrong: The ovation was for Misha. “Start smiling,” I told him. “This is for you.” More alarmed than flattered by the crowd’s attention—“he hated the fact people knew who he was”—Misha insisted that they leave the theater before the house lights went up. They met Rudolf backstage, and the three went to dinner at Monique van Vooren’s apartment, joining several other people, including Rudolf’s Vaganova contemporary Sasha Mintz. Jeannette was not alone that night in being struck by Rudolf’s kindness toward Baryshnikov. “He was telling him to see this movie and that play—he wanted everything to be good for Misha.” Above all, Rudolf was anxious to steer his fellow Pushkin pupil away from the mistakes he felt he had made. “He told me not to write autobiography too soon, who the best teachers were, to stay with one company, not jump around.” In London Nigel had been similarly impressed by Rudolf’s “extraordinary lack of jealousy” toward his young rival. He had been “relaxed and jokey” whenever he spoke of Misha, remarking on one occasion, “I am getting better press in America this year. Maybe my goodbye before the invasion of Mars begins.”

  This took place on July 27, with the Baryshnikov-Makarova Giselle. And it presented Nureyev devotees with a dilemma: whether to attend the hottest ballet event in a decade or to be loyal and see Rudolf’s Sleeping Beauty. Marilyn La Vine bought tickets for both, planning to watch only one act of Giselle so that she could still see the whole of Rudolf’s performance. (The Prince does not appear until act 2.) Giving her ticket stub to a friend—“like handing her $2,000 in cash”—she ran across to the Met with a thumping heart, thinking, “They won’t let me in, the door will be closed.… You’ve betrayed him.” But as she made her way to her usual seat she saw that the first row and front boxes normally filled by the “regulars” were empty. “And don’t think Rudolf wouldn’t have noticed.” At the stage door afterward, however, all the familiar faces were there.

  I remember this scene as if it just happened. When Rudolf came out there was a hush over the crowd, and what was unspoken filled the atmosphere with such an intense intimacy. As the fans parted to let him through, he paused. He never usually said anything to us, but this time he spoke to the group as if it were one person. “New boy in town—huh?” We all started to clap and didn’t stop, until finally, he said, “I believe you, I believe you!” It was very, very touching.

  When Paklusha telephoned Rudolf a couple of days later, he sounded depressed. He had been seeing Baryshnikov, Makarova, and Mintz virtually every night, he told her, complaining that they had been “ganging up against him.” “Actually,” Nigel noted in his diary, “I suspect that he is inevitably the Odd Man Out … the father figure of defectors.” But it was more than that. In the latest issue of The New Yorker, Arlene Croce, the doyenne of American dance critics, had described Baryshnikov as “the greatest male dancer to have escaped Russia since Nijinsky got himself fired by the Imperial Ballet in 1911.” No mention of Rudolf. Croce’s remark appeared in her review of “Makarova’s Miracle,” the ballerina’s staging for American Ballet Theatre of La Bayadère’s Shades act—Rudolf’s own first “astounding success.” Next to dancing, his productions of the Petipa classics were his greatest achievement, and hearing that Baryshnikov had watched a rehearsal of Sleeping Beauty, Rudolf immediately wanted to know his opinion. Misha had hesitated. To him, Rudolf’s version had seemed more English than Russian—“a different ballet … more Ninette de Valois” than authentic Petipa. “Well … I … I …,” he found himself stammering as he tried to think of something positive to say.

  Rudolf had also “known instinctively” that Misha had not liked his dancing. For someone who had grown up in Russia with the infamous Nureyev as “his lodestar, a fantasy figure,” it was disconcerting to find that, in terms of pure technique, Rudolf’s dancing was not nearly as accomplished as his own. He had “a lot of faults and ups and downs,” Baryshnikov told Joan Acocella, flaws he was able to cover with his extraordinary charisma. “It was like—oh, burning. His eyes were burning—everything. He created that kind of an atmosphere around him, electrifying!!” But there was no “internal logic” to Rudolf’s phrasing, he said, no natural flow from beginning to the end.” “He really was not interested in the cantilena of it. The joining steps. Everything is about showmanship: ‘Look at me, how I do this.’ Watch my fifth position—it’s clean, you know … and all those preparations, like: Ooooh!! Now I’ll do something!”

  Baryshnikov himself was a performer for whom preparations did not exist and the virtuoso steps were only transitions in an overarching dance picture. What Rudolf saw, however, was “a very good technique” and nothing else—“no spirit, no soul, no trembling of your feelings.” So it was distressing for him when Erik, the dancers’ dancer and his own lodestar, had been completely overwhelmed by Baryshnikov’s performances, telling his biographer, “Misha may well be the most dynamic dancer of his time.”

  Erik was then in New York to stage his production of La Sylphide for the Canadians, and although he had officially retired from the ballet stage in January 1972, he had agreed to make his debut as a character artist, performing the role of Madge the Witch. Initially Rudolf had wanted Erik to play Iago to his Othello in The Moor’s Pavane, news that had sent Lincoln Kirstein into an ecstasy of anticipation: “Erik told me I WILL KILL HIM KILL HIM KILL HIM!” he exclaimed to Richard Buckle, gossiping about this “duel of the century.” But Erik, who had been operated on six months earlier for a stomach ulcer, did not want to push himself too hard, joking that his transposition into a hideous, toothless hag was type-casting enough—“a perfect way to release everything that was evil inside of me.” (Rudolf later admitted that when Erik had lifted the Witch’s stick above his head, there was a moment when he had literally feared for his life.) Professionally their battle of egos continued, Misha observing how “each step one of them made was judged by the other,” and yet the premiere on August 9, 1974—the first time the two stars had appeared together onstage since 1962—was so emotional for them both that when the curtain came down they had instinctively embraced.

  For some time now Erik had been living with Constantin Patsalas, a Greek-born dancer and choreographer with the Canadian ballet, having at last found the domestic stability he craved. “Constantin is very patient with me, so that is good,” he told Rudolf, remarking in the same letter how much he had liked Wallace. They went out several times as a foursome with no apparent awkwardness, although, from Rudolf’s point of view, this was no wonder: It was Misha, not Constantin, who posed the threat. Coaching the dancer for his debut in La Sylphide, Erik had been “amazed that a Russian, who had never before attempted Bournonville, could achieve such purity and authenticity of style,” and Misha was no less admiring. Like Rudolf, he had seen Erik for the first time in Teja’s 1961 footage, and been struck by exactly the qualities that had so excited Rudolf—the beautiful length of the Bruhn line, and the dancer’s “cold power” (Misha, by describing this as “an incredible white heat,” virtually echoed Rudolf’s own famous oxymoron). Making no attempt to hide his jealousy, Rudolf would quip, “So you’re with Erik again! Maybe you two will get married,” but nevertheless he was determined that they should be friends, and invited Mis
ha to stay with him when he next came to London.

  They spent the second half of November together at Fife Road, driving off to morning class at Baron’s Court, where Rudolf seemed to take great pleasure in introducing the young star to his Royal Ballet colleagues. They went to see London Contemporary Dance Theatre; to “some low-low travesty show featuring transvestites”; and to supper with the Goslings. The couple’s first impression was of a polite, clever, but still very childlike young man—“much less complicated than R,” remarked Nigel, “which I fear may make him less interesting onstage.” But while Misha remembers “just having a really good time,” Rudolf claimed to have been disappointed by how taciturn the dancer was. “He was dying to hear all about Russia, and couldn’t believe that Misha hardly said a word. It was as if he thought the walls were listening.” Rudolf must have decided to liven things up, as it was very late one night when Misha arrived unexpectedly at Terry and Paklusha’s flat. “He just turned up on our doorstep, and said, ‘Can I stay with you? I was with Rudolf and he chased me all round the house. I can’t get away from him, so I left.’ Rudolf thought it was going to be a seduction scene; it just wasn’t, so Misha got a taxi to Carlos Place and stayed with us for the rest of the time.” (An entry in Nigel’s diary dated November 28 reports, “Misha apparently v upset by open homosexuality in Western ballet. He likes girls.”)

  Like Paklusha in London, Armen Bali had become “Mother of the Defectors” in San Francisco, a role she felt to be destined in Rudolf’s case. “A fortune-teller once said, ‘You will have two children, but there will be someone else, too, perhaps someone like a son, perhaps a friend, and he will open the world to you.’ ” As Rudolf indeed did, taking Armen with him on his travels—“Breakfast in London, dinner in Rome, next day, Monte Carlo.” Speaking five languages and well read in the Russian classics, she was, as Misha says, exactly the kind of strong-willed, educated woman that Rudolf admired. “Armen was exotic and very straightforward and loud and street-smart and made him feel at home.” She had, in addition, turned herself into a paragon of Russian motherhood—cooking him pelmeni, inventing a Bashkir salad (shredded and marinated raw beef with beets and new potatoes), washing his clothes, massaging his feet, and even scrubbing his back in the bath. “When he was in bed at night I would recite Pushkin and talk and talk until he dropped off to sleep, and then I’d tuck him in and go back to my room.”