Rupert Christiansen

Nureyev deserves better: Nureyev – Legend and Legacy, at Theatre Royal Drury Lane, reviewed

A few consolations – from Alina Cojocaru and Francesco Gabriele Frola – made the evening worthwhile

Cesar Corrales and Yasmine Naghdi fizzed through the camp bravura of the Le Corsaire pas de deux. Image: David M. Benett / Dave Benett / Getty Images 
issue 10 September 2022

I was never Rudolf Nureyev’s greatest fan. I must have seen him dance 30 or 40 times, starting with a Bayadère in the mid-1960s, and while his sheer presence remained so potent that he was always exciting to witness, I became increasingly aware of how fiercely willed his dancing was – a struggle with or against his own body, almost self-punishing (he believed that he performed at his best when he was totally exhausted). His final appearances, when he was showing symptoms of the Aids that killed him in 1993, were truly painful to watch on that score. He really had nothing left to give, but the compulsion remained.

Closer to my heart was his near-contemporary Anthony Dowell, with his noble modesty and feline beauty of line; and then came his younger compatriot Mikhail Baryshnikov, whose technique was far superior and whose art was infused with a joyful insouciance more appealing to me than Nureyev’s ferocious Tartar intensity.

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