Novelist Colum McCann's Dancer is the erotically charged story of the Russian dancer Rudolf Nureyev as told through the cast of those who knew him. There is Anna Vasileva, Rudi's first ballet teacher, who rescues her protégé from the stunted life of his provincial town; Yulia, whose sexual and artistic ambitions are thwarted by her Soviet-sanctioned marriage; and Victor, the Venezuelan street hustler, who reveals the lurid underside of the gay celebrity set. Spanning four decades and many worlds, from the horrors of the Second World War to the wild abandon of New York in the eighties, Dancer is peopled by a large cast of characters, obscure and famous: doormen and shoemakers, nurses and translators, Margot Fonteyn, Eric Bruhn and John Lennon. And at the heart of the spectacle stands the artist himself, willful, lustful, and driven by a never-to-be-met need for perfection.

In questa opera l’autore esprime tutta la sua vita attraverso testi poetici composti con profondità e intensità. Essa è dedicata all’amico Rudolf Nureyev con cui il Gardi ha trascorso momenti reali di confronto nella quotidianità e nella vita di tutti i giorni, potendo conoscere a fondo e nella più totale intimità la vera anima del ballerino di fama mondiale. I testi poetici trasmettono inoltre la storia della vita del Gardi attraverso poesie ricche di emozione, passione, romanticismo e allo stesso tempo di molto dolore e sofferenza. I testi poetici affrontano anche le tematiche dell’amore, della passione e della gioia.Un’opera che sicuramente saprà entrare nelle menti e nei cuori di tutti i lettori, soprattutto di tutte quelle persone che non hanno avuto una vita semplice e hanno sofferto sia in amore, sia in famiglia.La scelta di pubblicare il testo in lingua inglese è dovuta al fatto che l’autore vuole raggiungere i lettori di tutti i paesi del Mondo, per diffondere la storia e le emozioni che hanno caratterizzato il sincero e vero rapporto di amicizia tra Sandro Gardi e l’amico eterno Rudolf Nureyev.

A backstage memoir takes an intimate look at the complicated life, endless search for perfection, and outrageous experiences of one of ballet's greatest icons and heroes.

Rudolf Nureyev, one of the most iconic dancers of the twentieth century, had it all: beauty, genius, charm, passion, and sex appeal. No other dancer of our time has generated the same excitement, for both men and women, on or off the stage. In this superb biography, Julie Kavanagh deftly brings us through the professional and personal milestones of Nureyev's life and career: his education at the Kirov school in Leningrad; his controversial defection from the USSR in 1961; his long-time affair with the Danish dancer Erik Bruhn; his legendary partnership with Margot Fonteyn at the Royal Ballet in London. We see his fiery collaborations with almost all the major living choreographers including Ashton, Balanchine, Robbins, Graham, and Taylor. And we see Nureyev as he reinvigorated the Paris Ballet Opera in the early 1980s before his death from AIDS complications in 1993. Nureyev: The Life is the most intimate, revealing, and dramatic picture we have ever had of this dazzling, complex figure.

Rudolf Nureyev had it all: beauty, genius, charm, passion, and sex appeal. No other dancer of our time has generated the same excitement, for both men and women, on or off the stage. With Nureyev: The Life, Julie Kavanagh shows how his intense drive and passion for dance propelled him from a poor, Tatar-peasant background to the most sophisticated circles of London, Paris, and New York. His dramatic defection to the West in l961 created a Cold War crisis and made him an instant celebrity, but this was just the beginning. Nureyev spent the rest of his life breaking barriers: reinventing male technique, “crashing the gates” of modern dance, iconoclastically updating the most hallowed classics, and making dance history by partnering England’ s prima ballerina assoluta, Margot Fonteyn--a woman twice his age. He danced for almost all the major choreographers--Frederick Ashton, George Balanchine, Kenneth MacMillan, Jerome Robbins, Maurice Béjart, Roland Petit--his main motive, he claimed, for having left the Kirov. But Nureyev also made it his mission to stage Russia’s full-length masterpieces in the West. His highly personal productions of Swan Lake, The Nutcracker, Raymonda, Romeo and Juliet, and La Bayadère are the mainstays of the Paris Opéra Ballet repertory to this day. An inspirational director and teacher, Nureyev was a Diaghilev-like mentor to young protégés across the globe--from Karen Kain and Monica Mason (now directors themselves), to Sylvie Guillem, Elisabeth Platel, Laurent Hilaire and Kenneth Greve. Sex, as much as dance, was a driving force for Nureyev. From his first secret liaison in Russia to his tempestuous relationship with the great Danish dancer Erik Bruhn, we see not only Nureyev’s notorious homosexual history unfold, but also learn of his profound effect on women--whether a Sixties wild child or Jackie Kennedy and Lee Radziwill or the aging Marlene Dietrich. Among the first victims of AIDS, Nureyev was diagnosed HIV positive in 1984 but defied the disease for nearly a decade, dancing, directing the Paris Opéra Ballet, choreographing, and even beginning a new career as a conductor. Still making plans for the future, Nureyev finally succumbed and died in January l993. Drawing on previously undisclosed letters, diaries, home-movie footage, interviews with Nureyev’s inner circle, and her own dance background, Julie Kavanagh gives the most intimate, revealing, and dramatic picture we have ever had of this dazzling, complex figure. NOTE: This edition does not include photos.

A well-known American artist reveals the grace and grandeur of a famed dancer.

Traces the legendary Russian dancer's climb out of poverty in the war-torn Soviet Union to become one of the century's most popular and influential artists. In order to separate reality from myth, the author draws on Soviet archives, family documents, diaries, correspondence, and about 200 interviews with his friends, peers, family, partners and professional colleagues. She takes us inside the great companies and shows how Nureyev changed the face of ballet and transformed the role of the male dancer. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR