Instead, he cruised the backrooms of clubs in Paris and New York for anonymous sex, while treating his few live-in lovers with contempt.Īfter his departure from the Royal Ballet and his split with Bruhn, both Nureyev's personal and professional lives lacked a centre, and that is reflected in the middle section of this book which dwindles into an overlong record of performances and productions, punctuated by high society parties and low-life escapades. The one certainty is that, throughout the golden years of his and Fonteyn's partnership, Nureyev was romantically involved with the great Danish dancer Erik Bruhn, an affair which drove both men to the brink of despair and convinced Nureyev never again to give his heart so freely. Instead, she records the voices on either side of the debate, with Nureyev himself claiming both to have 'missed the bus' with Fonteyn and to have made her pregnant. Like previous commentators, Kavanagh is unable to determine how much of Fonteyn and Nureyev's on-stage passion spilt over to their offstage lives. Kavanagh here provides evidence of his first gay affair with the young East German dancer Teja Kremke, who encouraged his desire to defect. It has long been known that he had his first heterosexual affair with the predatory middle-aged Xenia, wife of his revered teacher Alexander Pushkin. The most revelatory sections of the book are those that deal with Nureyev's artistic and sentimental education in Leningrad.

It is now authoritatively retold by Julie Kavanagh, who puts her own dance training and critical background to excellent use as she analyses the virtues and defects of Nureyev's performances, his legendary partnership with Margot Fonteyn, his remounting of Russian classics and his seemingly interminable battles with ballet companies and administrators.

The story of his life is familiar from countless profiles and documentaries and well over a dozen biographies: how the Tartar wild boy - born into poverty so extreme that he was carried to school by his mother because he had no shoes - escaped first to Leningrad and then to the West, becoming an international superstar.

The Shadows Dance by Patch Middleton