Superstar, sex symbol, style icon far beyond ballet: Rudolf Nureyev, the greatest of all dancers, died 30 years ago.
A record number of photographers in the stalls, two superstars on stage – she in her forties, he just in his mid-twenties: Rudolf Nureyev is the new sun god in the European dance firmament. He has acquired the appropriate manners in no time since fleeing to the West in 1961 on a tour of the Leningrad Kirov Ballet at Paris Le Bourget Airport – to artistic freedom. Within a few months, Europe was at the feet of this Nureyev, and London’s prima ballerina Margot Fonteyn seems to have just been waiting for him to rejuvenate the slightly withered charm of her performances by a good decade. They’re a dream couple when Nureyev isn’t having a break. Like that morning in March 1963, when he torpedoed the dress rehearsal of Frederick Ashton’s “Marguerite and Armand” in Covent Garden using all the rules of ego art. The costume is torn to shreds, the partner scolds, moans and complains like crazy. In any case, the assembled photographers get an unforgettable impression of how Nureyev brings one of his favorite bon mots to life: “From me for me”.