Rudolf Nureyev: The Life

Description

The incredible story of the 20th century's superstar ballet dancer, soon to be a major film by Ralph Fiennes Born on a train in Stalin's Russia, Rudolf Nureyev was ballet's first pop icon. No other dancer of our time has generated the same excitement - both on and off stage. Nureyev's achievements and conquests became legendary- he rose out of Tatar peasant poverty to become the Kirov's thrilling maverick star; slept with his beloved mentor's wife; defected to the West in 1961; sparked Rudimania across the globe; established the most rhapsodic partnership in dance history with the middle-aged Margot Fonteyn; reinvented male technique; gatecrashed modern dance; moulded new stars; and staged Russia's unknown ballet masterpieces in the West. He and his life were simply astonishing.

Julie Kavanagh trained as a dancer at the Royal Ballet School, and is the author of Secret Muses- The Life of Frederick Ashton. She has worked as ballet critic of The Spectator; Arts Editor of Harpers & Queen; and London Editor of Vanity Fair and The New Yorker. She is married to the ex-Royal Ballet dancer, now dance film maker, Ross MacGibbon, and has two sons.

Magnificent, compulsively readable * Guardian * A gripping account of an extraordinary life * Daily Telegraph * Magnificent, a triumph. Captures every facet of this extraordinary man * Mail on Sunday * Undoubtedly the definitive biography. Rudolf Nureyev, superstar, emerges in all his terribly flawed glory * Sunday Telegraph * The definitive study of a man who, in his combination of aesthetic grace and psychological grime, can truly be called a sacred monster * Observer * Julie Kavanagh writes with flair and abundance * The Sunday Times *