Rudolf Nureyev Applying His Make-up 1976, 1976
David Steen

Limited Edition David Steen Estate Print.

Limited Edition: All prints are limited editions, no further prints are produced once sold.

Paper size - 44 x 31 " / 111 x 78 cm.
Limited to 20 only this size.

All prints are bespoke and printed to order.
stamped and numbered by the Estate.

Copyright: © David Steen / The David Steen Archive

Rudolf Nureyev
In this name that follows Eastern Slavic naming conventions, the patronymic is Khametovich and the family name is Nureyev.

Rudolf Khametovich Nureyev (17 March 1938 – 6 January 1993) was a Soviet-born ballet dancer and choreographer. Nureyev is regarded by some as the greatest male ballet dancer of his generation.

Nureyev was born on a Trans-Siberian train near Irkutsk, Siberia, Soviet Union, to a Tatar family. He began his early career with the company that in the Soviet era was called the Kirov Ballet (now called by its original name, the Mariinsky Ballet) in Leningrad. He defected from the Soviet Union to the West in 1961, despite KGB efforts to stop him.

This was the first defection of a Soviet artist during the Cold War, and it created an international sensation. He went on to dance with The Royal Ballet in London and from 1983 to 1989 served as director of the Paris Opera Ballet. Nureyev was also a choreographer serving as the chief choreographer of the Paris Opera Ballet. He produced his own interpretations of numerous classical works, including Swan Lake, Giselle and La Bayadère.

Early life

Nureyev's grandfather, Nurakhmet Fazlievich Fazliev, and his father, Khamit Fazleevich Nureyev (1903–1985), were from Asanovo in the Sharipov volost of the Ufa District of the Ufa Governorate (now the Ufa District of the Republic of Bashkortostan). His mother, Farida Agliullovna Nureyeva (Agliullova) (1907–1987), was born in the village of Tatarskoye Tyugulbaevo, Kuznechikhinsky volost, Kazan Governorate (now Alkeyevsky District of the Republic of Tatarstan).

Nureyev was born on a Trans-Siberian train near Irkutsk, Siberia, while his mother Farida was travelling to Vladivostok, where his father Khamet, a Red Army political commissar, was stationed.

He was raised as the only son with three older sisters in a Tatar Muslim family.

In his autobiography, Nureyev noted about his Tatar heritage: "My mother was born in the beautiful ancient city of Kazan. We are Muslims. Father was born in a small village near Ufa, the capital of the Republic of Bashkiria. Thus, on both sides our relatives are Tatars and Bashkirs. I cannot define exactly what it means to me to be a Tatar, and not a Russian, but I feel this difference in myself. Our Tatar blood flows somehow faster and is always ready to boil".

Career

Education at Vaganova Academy

When his mother took Nureyev and his sisters into a performance of the ballet Song of the Cranes, he fell in love with dance.[8] As a child, he was encouraged to dance in Bashkir folk performances and his precocity was soon noticed by teachers who encouraged him to train in Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg). On a tour stop in Moscow with a local ballet company, Nureyev auditioned for the Bolshoi ballet company and was accepted. However, he felt that the Mariinsky Ballet school was the best, so he left the local touring company and bought a ticket to Leningrad.

Owing to the disruption of Soviet cultural life caused by World War II, Nureyev was unable to enroll in a major ballet school until 1955, aged 17, when he was accepted by the Vaganova Academy of Russian Ballet of Leningrad, the associate school of the Mariinsky Ballet. The ballet master Alexander Ivanovich Pushkin took an interest in him professionally and allowed Nureyev to live with him and his wife.

Principal with Kirov Ballet

Upon his graduation in 1958, Nureyev joined the Kirov Ballet (now Mariinsky). He moved immediately beyond the corps level, and was given solo roles as a principal dancer from the outset. Nureyev regularly partnered with Natalia Dudinskaya, the company's senior ballerina and wife of its director, Konstantin Sergeyev. Dudinskaya, who was 26 years his senior, first chose him as her partner in the ballet Laurencia.

Before long, Nureyev became one of the Soviet Union's best-known dancers. From 1958 to 1961, in his three years with the Kirov, he danced 15 roles, usually opposite his partner, Ninel Kurgapkina, with whom he was very well paired, although she was almost a decade older than he was.

Nureyev and Kurgapkina were invited to dance at a gathering at Khrushchev's dacha, and in 1959 they were allowed to travel outside the Soviet Union, dancing in Vienna at the International Youth Festival. Not long after, he was told by the Ministry of Culture that he would not be allowed to go abroad again.[16] In one memorable incident, Nureyev interrupted a performance of Don Quixote for 40 minutes, insisting on dancing in tights and not in the customary trousers. He relented in the end, but his preferred dress code was adopted in later performances.

Defection at Paris airport

By the late 1950s, Nureyev had become a sensation in the Soviet Union and though Nureyev's rebellious character and non-conformist attitude made him an unlikely candidate for the tour with the as Kirov Ballet, it became more essential he join the tour which the Soviet government considered crucial to its ambitions to demonstrate its "cultural supremacy" over the West.

Furthermore, tensions were growing between Nureyev and the Kirov's artistic director Konstantin Sergeyev, who was also the husband of Nureyev's former dance partner Natalia Dudinskaya.

After a representative of the French tour organisers saw Nureyev dance in Leningrad in 1960, the French organisers urged Soviet authorities to let him dance in Paris, and he was allowed to go.

In Paris, his performances electrified audiences and critics. Oliver Merlin in Le Monde wrote,

I will never forget his arrival running across the back of the stage, and his catlike way of holding himself opposite the ramp. He wore a white sash over an ultramarine costume, had large wild eyes and hollow cheeks under a turban topped with a spray of feathers, bulging thighs, immaculate tights. This was already Nijinsky in Firebird.

Nureyev was seen to have broken the rules about mingling with foreigners and allegedly frequented gay bars in Paris, which alarmed the Kirov's management[19] and the KGB agents observing him. The KGB wanted to send him back to the Soviet Union. On 16 June 1961 when the Kirov company gathered at Le Bourget Airport in Paris to fly to London, Sergeyev took Nureyev aside and told him that he must return to Moscow for a special performance in the Kremlin, rather than go on to London with the rest of the company. Nureyev became suspicious and refused.

Next he was told that his mother had fallen severely ill and he needed to go home immediately to see her.
Nureyev refused again, believing that on return to the USSR he was likely to be imprisoned.

With the help of French police and a Parisian socialite friend, Clara Saint, who had been engaged to Vincent Malraux, the son of the French Minister of Culture, André Malraux, Nureyev escaped his KGB minders and asked for asylum. Sergeyev and the KGB tried to dissuade him, but he chose to stay in Paris.

Within a week, he was signed by the Grand Ballet du Marquis de Cuevas and performed The Sleeping Beauty with Nina Vyroubova.

On a tour of Denmark he met Erik Bruhn, soloist at the Royal Danish Ballet.
Bruhn became his lover, his closest friend and his protector until Bruhn's death in 1986.

He and Bruhn both appeared as guest dancers with the newly formed Australian Ballet at Her Majesty's Theatre, Sydney in December 1962.

Soviet authorities made Nureyev's father, mother and dance teacher Pushkin write letters to him, urging him to return, without effect.

Although he petitioned the Soviet government for many years to be allowed to visit his mother, he was not allowed to do so until 1987, when his mother was dying and Mikhail Gorbachev consented to the visit.

In 1989, he was invited to dance the role of James in La Sylphide with the Mariinsky Ballet at the Mariinsky Theatre in Leningrad.

The visit gave him the opportunity to see many of the teachers and colleagues he had not seen since his defection.

The Royal Ballet

Principal dancer

Dame Ninette de Valois offered him a contract to join The Royal Ballet as Principal Dancer. During his time at the company, however, many critics became enraged as Nureyev made substantial changes to the productions of Swan Lake and Giselle.


Nureyev stayed with the Royal Ballet until 1970, when he was promoted to Principal Guest Artist, enabling him to concentrate on his increasing schedule of international guest appearances and tours. He continued to perform regularly with The Royal Ballet until committing his future to the Paris Opera Ballet in the 1980s.

Fonteyn and Nureyev

Nureyev's first appearance with prima ballerina Dame Margot Fonteyn was in a ballet matinée organised by The Royal Ballet: Giselle, 21 February 1962.

The event was held in aid of the Royal Academy of Dance, a classical ballet teaching organisation of which she was president. He danced Poème Tragique, a solo choreographed by Frederick Ashton, and the Black Swan pas de deux from Swan Lake. They were so well received that Fonteyn and Nureyev proceeded to form a partnership that endured for many years. They premiered Romeo and Juliet for the company in 1965.[28] Fans of the duo would tear up their programmes to make confetti to throw at the dancers. Nureyev and Fonteyn sometimes did more than 20 curtain calls.
A film of this performance was made in 1966 and is available on DVD.

On 11 July 1967, Fonteyn and Nureyev, after performing in San Francisco, were arrested on nearby roofs, having fled during a police raid on a home in the Haight-Ashbury district.

They were bailed out, and charges of disturbing the peace and visiting a place where marijuana was used were dropped later that day for lack of sufficient evidence.

Other international appearances

Among many appearances in North America, Nureyev developed a long-lasting connection with the National Ballet of Canada, appearing as a guest artist on many occasions. In 1972, he staged a spectacular new production of Sleeping Beauty for the company, with his own additional choreography augmenting that of Petipa. The production toured widely in the U.S. and Canada after its initial run in Toronto, one performance of which was televised live and subsequently issued on video.

Among the National Ballet's ballerinas, Nureyev most frequently partnered with Veronica Tennant and Karen Kain. In 1975 Nureyev worked extensively with American Ballet Theatre resurrecting Le Corsaire with Gelsey Kirkland.

He recreated Sleeping Beauty, Swan Lake, and Ramonda with Cynthia Gregory.

Gregory and Brun joined Nureyev in a pas des trois from the little-known August Bournonville ballet La Ventana.

Director of the Paris Opera Ballet

In January 1982, Austria granted Nureyev citizenship,
ending more than twenty years of statelessness.

In 1983, he was appointed director of the Paris Opera Ballet, where, as well as directing, he continued to dance and to promote younger dancers. He remained there as a dancer and chief choreographer until 1989. Among the dancers he mentored were Sylvie Guillem, Isabelle Guérin, Manuel Legris, Elisabeth Maurin, Élisabeth Platel, Charles Jude, and Monique Loudières.

His artistic directorship of the Paris Opera Ballet was a great success, lifting the company out of a dark period. His The Sleeping Beauty remains in the repertoire and was revived and filmed with his protégé Manuel Legris in the lead.

Despite advancing illness towards the end of his tenure, he worked tirelessly, staging new versions of old standbys and commissioning some of the most ground-breaking choreographic works of his time. His own Romeo and Juliet was a popular success.

When he was sick towards the end of his life, he worked on a final production of La Bayadère which closely follows the Mariinsky Ballet version he danced as a young man.






David Steen

David Steen’s introduction to photography was as a 15-year-old school leaver joining Picture Post where he had the good luck to be taken under the wing of the legendary Bert Hardy as an assistant. It was the ultimate training ground in photojournalism, and the launch pad for his career.

David’s reunion with Picture Post after doing his National Service (as special photographer based in Eygpt, covering the major trouble zones) was short-lived. The magazine was losing ground and closed. He moved to Fleet Street, first to a bright new Mirror title, Woman’s Sunday Mirror, where incidentally he picked up First Prize in Encyclopaedia Britannica’s Best Pictures of the Year Award for his sequence of ‘Birth of a Baby’, the progress of a young woman delivering her own baby under hypnosis.

He was 21, the youngest ever to be awarded this prize. There followed time as a staff photographer with The Daily Mail; Fleet Street was the hub of the world. Then on to freelancing…Queen magazine, Nova, the Sunday Times Magazine, international magazines around the world, over the years covering projects as diverse as riots in Harlem to a film set in Acapulco, a battered wives’ refuge to the Queen and family at Sandringham: the hopeless, the homeless, the glitterati. Trained on the maxim ‘every picture tells a story’ he has focused on film stars, actors, criminals, politicians, prime ministers and countless men, women and children going about their everyday lives.

David Steen believes himself to be lucky. He thinks lucky; luck is being in the right place at the right time, having the luck to have a loving family and enduring friends and winning a three-year battle against cancer.

Asked by aspiring photographers for his best advice, his stock reply is: ‘Get up early.’

David Steen † 1936 – 2015