Nureyev : The Life (9780307807342)

by Kavanagh, Julie

  Ninel Kurgapkina had moved into quai Voltaire for the duration of rehearsals and saw the effort it cost Rudolf to leave his bed each morning. “It took as much as an hour sometimes, and then he would be drenched with sweat.” Knowing what Bayadère meant to him, the dancers, even those who had been against him, worked feverishly hard, wanting to make up for all the conflicts of the past. But Rudolf had not forgotten. In answer to Ninel’s surprise at not casting Elisabeth Platel as Nikiya he said, “She doesn’t deserve it. She signed the letter.” Playing the vengeful Gamzatti to Isabelle Guérin’s Nikiya, Platel admits to feeling slighted at first, though believes this gave an added dimension to her performance. “I was rather angry with him, and my interpretation may have come from that.” She, too, sensed the complete change in the company’s attitude toward Rudolf. “By the time of Bayadère we were all with him. Without Kenneth in the middle.” But it was during those three weeks that Rudolf’s condition began to deteriorate with terrifying speed.

  Getting up to demonstrate a movement he would fall to one side, and he could barely speak above a whisper. Too troubled by the change in his friend to contemplate performing, Charles Jude told Rudolf, “I’m sorry. I can’t do your Bayadère.” (Laurent Hilaire, who was a decade younger, was cast in his place—a decision Rudolf believed had “hurt Charles.”)

  Two or three days before the premiere Hélène Traïline, the Opéra’s program adviser, received a call from Pierre Bergé’s assistant asking her to inform M. Nureyev that he would not be conducting Bayadère. “The president has engaged someone else.” Anticipating Rudolf’s reaction, Hélène, in turn, called Michel Canesi. “Bergé was scared of telling Rudolf himself. I was not scared, but if I was telling him it would be for artistic reasons, and the real reason was his health.” Remembering the number of times his patient had spurned his advice in the past, Canesi arrived at quai Voltaire in a state of trepidation.

  “Are you sure you want to conduct the premiere?”

  “Yes, why?”

  “Because I think it’s quite dangerous for you. Remember how tiring New York was? If you collapse, it would be a disaster for the dancers. I would advise you not to. We can watch from small loge at the side.” He became furious. “Don’t shit on my brain!” And then the phone rang—it was Carla Fracci from Rome—and I heard Rudolf say, “I’m fine but my doctor doesn’t want me to conduct so I’m just going to attend the premiere.” I could hear in his voice that he was quite relieved. He knew in his heart that he could never have done it.

  At the October 7 general rehearsal Rudolf lay on a divan in the wings, with Maude, Douce, and Gloria close by. As Isabelle Guérin left the stage at the end of an act Mario Bois watched her fall sobbing into Rudolf’s arms. “I will never forget that moment; his face of a sphinx, not moving, expressing nothing, staring into the distance.” There are several possible explanations. Although she was developing her Nikiya interpretation into something sublime, it was Guérin who had been less than cooperative during Kenneth’s debut in Swan Lake. There was the fact Rudolf did not like extravagant displays of emotion—“you weren’t allowed to say good-bye.” And, finally, it was too late. “At the Opéra I waited. If the dancers loved me they were not telling me so. And me, deep down, was saying to them: Come and embrace me. Finally I bought a dog.”

  On the night of the premiere itself, October 8, Rudolf lay propped up by pillows in a box to the right of the stage. With him were Canesi, Luigi, Marika, and Jeannette, the latter two asserting their position at the top of the hierarchy of seven women who had helped to prepare him for the occasion. In another box sat Ninel Kurgapkina with the choreographer Yuri Grigorovich* —Gamzatti and the Golden Idol in the 1959 Kirov performance in which Rudolf had danced Solor. This audience, as Platel said, “was very special—it was his whole life.” It included Rosella Hightower, Violette Verdy, John Taras, Noëlla Pontois, Roland Petit, Ghislaine Thesmar, Pierre Lacotte, Anthony Dowell, Sylvie Guillem, “et tous les Rothschild de Paris.” And at the first intermission, as Rudolf stayed recumbent in his loge, many old friends and colleagues lined up to congratulate him and say good-bye. He was spotted by his New York fan Marilyn La Vine at the second intermission slowly making his way down the corridor, supported by Marika on one side and Luigi on the other. “I rushed up to him and he took my hands and leaned close to hear what I was saying. His hands were warm but his face was bluish. He was extraordinarily weak, but his eyes were alive and blazing. So, it was like seeing the essence of him peering out of a decaying form. I was staring death in the face and yet that powerful wild spirit was so strong in his eyes. You could see the separation of spirit and body.”

  When it was time for the final curtain calls Canesi asked Rudolf if he was sure he wanted to go onstage. “Yes, I must do it. But let’s make it quick.” As Genia Poliakov once remarked, there could be no admission of weakness with Rudolf: “Crippled or wrapped in bandages, he went onstage. It was the spirit before the body.” And now, supported on each side, the dying Nureyev shuffled on from the wings, his shawl and bonnet reminding Mario Bois of “the imaginary Invalid, a dying Molière.” Not believing what they were seeing, the audience was silent for several seconds before the explosion of their ovation broke. “We were attending a tragic miracle,” writes Bois. “On this same stage where, thirty-one years earlier, an unknown young man had flung himself into his variations from La Bayadère, this evening the great Nureyev was giving us his Bayadère to say good-bye.” After the curtain had fallen, when Jack Lang hung a medal around his neck honoring him with the title of Commander of Arts and Letters, it seemed that only Rudolf was dry eyed. Several onlookers, Luigi among them, observed the gesture with more than a little scorn. “Everybody who was enemy of Rudolf—who push him out—now crowning him with laurels.” Sylvie Guillem felt the same. “I think he was victorious in a way. He had this look in his eyes: ‘Now I’ve got you. Even if I’m dying, I’ve got you.’ ” But there were no hard feelings on Rudolf’s part that night. Asked by Michel Canesi, “Are you happy?” he said, “Yes. Very very happy.” Too exhausted to do more than put in an appearance at the postperformance dinner, Rudolf wanted Michel and Luigi to take him home. As they helped him make his way out, pulling him up by the elbows so that he could walk without sinking on bent knees, they were stopped by Bergé, who had arranged for him to be photographed by Paris-Match. “No,” insisted Marika, anticipating the consequences, but Rudolf saw no reason why not: In his mind he was still Byron’s Corsaire, his spirit “burning but unbent.”

  His Bayadère had been a personal triumph—the apotheosis of a thirty-year mission to bring Petipa’s unknown classics to the West. Brilliantly paced, it contrasts silent movie mime and rhapsodic love duets with formulaic divertissements of classroom steps interspersed with vibrant character dances, which have all the ensemble excitement of a Broadway musical. If the beginning of act 1 lacks action, scene 2 more than compensates, with Rudolf’s new variations for Solor’s friends—heralding a choreographic departure for him, with not a single frenetic rond de jambe in sight—and ending with the deadly confrontation between the two heroines. Act 2 provides an upsurge of glorious dancing, when Gamzatti, exchanging her sari and slippers for point shoes and a tutu, comes into her own as a virtuosic diva, her technical feats, alone and in tandem with Solor, as much fun to watch as the ethnic corps de ballet routines. Then there is the minimalist masterpiece of act 3’s Kingdom of the Shades—“the essence, the heartbeat of ballet”—its academic severity crescendoing into a beatific climax of ineffable power and beauty.

  To this day La Bayadère remains the company’s showcase, the lush St. Petersburg plastique of the women, the taut strides, electric presence, and imperious port de bras of the men still bearing their former director’s indelible mark. When first asked to produce his Shades act for the Opéra, Rudolf had been reluctant to let it go, telling Rolf Liebermann, “When your dancers and your critics are ready for this ballet. It’s not a ballet you get, it’s a ballet you grow with.
You probably need ten years. To do it the dancers have to be self-effacing, to breathe like one. This is indigenous with English dancers.… While in Paris, like Moscow, it’s individuality that counts … It doesn’t quite work.” Ninel Kurgapkina agrees that it had been hard for her to instill Kirov style in the French. “It’s not in their schooling. They don’t want to and they can’t.” But as Rudolf realized, La Bayadère is a work to which dancers must aspire. It would take years for the principals to appreciate and master the mime scenes, for the corps de ballet “to breathe like one.” As much time, in fact, as it would take French critics to come round to Petipa’s pure classicism. The first reviews—even that of Rudolf’s great champion René Sirvin—complained that the ballet lacked audacity and imagination, that a more contemporary approach was required.

  Whatever Rudolf’s reasons for contributing so little of his own to the choreography, the fact that his dancing career was over meant that he could see a production as a whole for the first time, and not just as another vehicle for himself. Violette Verdy had predicted this, remarking in 1986, “I’m convinced that his greatest years as a choreographer are still ahead when he has totally removed himself as a performer. Then, we will see the full measure of his knowledge and creativity.” John Percival, however, was not alone in drawing attention to “one big disappointment”: namely, that Rudolf had been prevented from carrying out his wish to restore the missing last act. In the circumstances, though, this was surely meant to be. How apt that the ballet Rudolf regarded as a reflection of his turmoil with the Paris Opéra Ballet should end with an image of forgiveness and love rather than with an act of retribution. What comes to mind is the reconciliatory mood of Shakespeare late romances; the final denouement of The Winter’s Tale not the tragedy we expect but resolving, like Rudolf’s Bayadère, into tranquillity and renewed friendship.

  The day after the performance Barry Weinstein went to quai Voltaire to discuss various issues, among them what he called Rudolf’s “resting place.” Scorning the euphemism, Rudolf snapped back, “What do you mean? Do you mean buried?” “Yes,” Weinstein said, “the final place.” But this was not the moment. “He felt immortal,” said Charles Jude, who had barely arrived when Rudolf insisted that he go immediately to the Air France office to buy tickets to St. Barts. When Grigorovich called to congratulate him on his success, Rudolf began talking excitedly about what he had in mind to do next. “I want to sell myself,” he exclaimed. “I want to stage my productions or to conduct something else.” He was just as euphoric when Liuba spoke to him. “I asked how the evening had gone and he said, ‘Superb! I’m so happy.’ And then he wanted to know if I had talked to Sobchak, and told me to make sure that he hadn’t forgotten his promise.” As far as Rudolf was concerned, he still had “some free time left,” and he intended to make use of every remaining hour. There were firm invitations for at least half a dozen conducting engagements: Coppélia later in the fall for Roland Petit’s company in Marseille; The Nutcracker for the San Francisco Ballet; Petrushka for the Dutch National Ballet on New Year’s Day 1993; Don Quixote for the Australian ballet’s revival of his production in February ’93; and The Nutcracker in March in Graz, where Rudolf’s old friend from Vienna, Gerhard Brunner, was now director. “No one knew if it would be a year or two years—or just a week.”

  To Rudi van Dantzig, who also visited quai Voltaire the day after the premiere, it was completely absurd to be talking seriously about the future. He and Toer van Schayk had gone there intending to say goodbye, but instead found themselves listening to Rudolf outline his plans while at the same time “looking for disbelief” in their eyes. “We had to play along with that, and it was as if we were acting,” says Rudi. “I felt such a hypocrite—a comedian, in a way—because it was so double.” In his Nureyev memoir a hauntingly vivid chapter titled “A Million Love Songs Later”* describes the scene as it really was. An emaciated Rudolf lies in a darkened room as Marika and Jeannette come and go, “listening, washing, feeding,” and Douce screens the newspapers for any mention of la maladie de notre temps (“so only a couple of reviews land on Rudolf’s bed”). Not wanting to tire him Rudi and Toer move into another room “and have a hushed conversation with ‘the women.’ ” Resenting their “grayish presence,” however, Marika decided to speak her mind. “These men were in the salon pouring with sadness, and I had to tell them, ‘Rudolf is sensitive to these things, so please cheer yourselves up.’ They had brought such deep misery, and Rudolf was feeling it through the walls.” Like James Redfield, author of the Celestine books, Marika believed in “the Importance of Uplifting Others”; that by completely focusing on a person you can become a channel for a higher spiritual energy, which originates “from the divine source.” “I sat seven hours one time with Rudolf holding my hand. It was not to hold my hand but it was the energy you could bring him. That was the main purpose of the presence. At that moment, you can say: ‘I’m with you deeply and wherever you go, I’ll go. To sustain you.’ ”

  Jeannette also did everything she could to raise Rudolf’s spirits, and when Lee Radziwill called to send her love, urged Lee to visit him herself. “I went into the bedroom to tell him she was coming and watched him just perk up. He didn’t want her to see him looking bad, so I helped make him a turban from a Ralph Lauren towel.” As Lee arrived, Rudolf was “stretched out like Mme. Recamier” on a divan in the drawing room. “It was a brilliantly convincing act. Totally nineteenth century. His dignity and nobility were extraordinary. The dignity with which he died.” Jeannette also encouraged Rudolf to see Madonna, who had sent a vast bouquet of flowers with a note saying that she was staying at the Ritz in Paris and would be honored to meet him. “Who’s Madonna?” he asked. Jeannette explained, and Rudolf said, “Okay, call and invite her to tea.” As the day Madonna suggested was the day they were leaving for St. Barts, she asked if they could postpone their trip. At this point, though, nothing could have stopped Rudolf. Michel Canesi had tried hard enough: It was an exhausting journey, flying first to America, changing in Haiti, and again in St. Martin, before getting the tiny island-hopping plane. Looking at his dying friend, Rudi van Dantzig was convinced he would never get there. “It is a dream, a chimera.” But not to Rudolf. “You just wait till you drop off the tree. Meanwhile you enjoy life to the full, deny nothing.”

  Discovering that they were on a plane full of paparazzi and English tabloid journalists, Jeannette and Charles Jude pleaded with the Air France staff to be allowed to disembark with Rudolf and catch another flight. But the press caught up with them on the island, and one night a photographer attempted to break into the house. Hearing the noise, Jeannette ran out with flashlight. “It wasn’t turned on, and this guy must have thought it was a gun because he got down on his knees with his hands up and begged me not to shoot.” With the Paris-Match photographs syndicated around the world, a rush of fan letters arrived; one, from Argentina, addressed only to “Rudolf Nureyev Island, Saint Barthélemy, Antilles,” another, from Amsterdam, offering eleventh-hour salvation.

  Maybe I can help you … I’m Roman Catholic, and can send to you special water from Lourdes (H Virgin) and Heiloo (Netherlands, St. Willibrord) and Dokkum (Friesland, St. Bonifatius)…. Oh you are so great.… I enjoyed your dance with Dame Fonteyn in ‧68 especially your entrée Corsaire.… If you don’t object I send to you the special water and shall pray for you—the special prayer from St. Bernardus Clairvaux.

  There were calls throughout the day from friends, among them Misha Baryshnikov, who also owned a house on the island. “Rudolf was worried that he would come over,” says Jeannette. “He didn’t want Misha seeing him like that.” But Baryshnikov was calling from New York, and they spoke for about twenty minutes. “He was very very weak and then he said, ‘I have to go to Paris to take care of my Nutcracker.’ We never talked about any illness.… No, no, no, no, no.” When Frank Augustyn called about the Ottawa gala Rudolf, anxious for him to see that it was now out of the question, suggested that he come to St.
Barts. “I told him why it was hard for me to get away, and he said, ‘Well, if you plan to come—just don’t be too late.’ ” Frank put down the phone, and immediately booked a flight. “Eighteen hours later I was there.” As Rudolf lay on a divan in the dining room alcove, with Frank sitting next to him on the floor, Solaria skulked away, still unwilling to stay close to her master. “She’s the only bitch I’ve never been able to get into bed with me,” quipped Rudolf, and, when discussing the music Frank wanted him to conduct, his wit was just as quick. Hearing that it was the second movement of Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony, Rudolf said, without a second’s hesitation, “Ah, the funeral march.” And yet, however evident it was that the end was near, Frank, when leaving the next day, told Rudolf with genuine conviction that he would see him in March. “I wasn’t giving up hope.”