Full schedule
Our Nureyev pages
Jane Pritchard article
John Percival article

Anyway, I did go to see the programme on 3rd January, but haven't got the programme notes with me. 2 performances of the Flower Festival pdd, one in his first appearance on US TV in the Bell Telephone Hour (with Maria Tallchief) and a later, better one with Merle Park, supposedly at the ROH. Les Sylphides with Fonteyn and the Royal Ballet, which I could watch time and time again; a rather toe-curlingly amusing (laughter from people imagining what was going through Rudolf's mind at the time, I imagine) and self-indulgent interview with Lindsay Anderson, of the type I'm sure they'd never be allowed to broadcast nowadays; and an extract from Omnibus (apparently in the days when they regularly covered several shorter items) of Rudolf rehearsing the Kingdom of the Shades with a young Bryony Brind, and both of them being interviewed during/after. I think that was it. There's some marvellous footage from the TV archives that you'll probably never get to see otherwise.

Tonight's (8.50, NFT1) is a French film about Nureyev and Petipa, presumably at the Paris Opera Ballet. I think it's comparatively recent.

Jane Pritchard and Wallace Potts have done the NFT proud. I just wish I hadn't got so many other things planned that I can't go and see all the programmes, so I'm having to cut out the ones I already have on video, which is a shame, as I'd love to see Don Q on a big screen.

La Sylphide with Carla Fracci
Field Figures with Deanne Bergsma
Marguerite & Armand with Fonteyn
Sleeping Beauty with Lynn Seymour

Yesterday’s R&J is 1966’s production but beautiful New Print, I hope I can manage to go to see this again.

Nereyev et Petipa is 1996’s French production (95mins), which also includes some of old materials, for example a colour film of Le Corsaire pas de deux with Alla Sizova (she is so charming!) at the 1958 Moscow competition, the rehearsal of Raymonda with Fonteyn at Spoleto in 1964,Swan Lake act2 with Natalia Makarova in 1973 and so on

No time to write more at present, but I am so sorry it's one of the few showings that isn't going to be repeated.

Fortunately for us, Nureyev was front page news from the moment he 'chose freedom' at Orly airport in 1961, so there is film of him right from the start of his career in the west, starting with both rehearsal and performance of Sleeping Beauty with the company of the Marquis de Cuevas, who signed him up within the first few days, the common currency of Petipa allowing him to fit in instantly in a strange company. Less than 3 years later he was preparing his first full length production - Raymonda, for the Royal Ballet's touring company. A documentary film, This is Rudolf Nureyev, was made during the rehearsal period in Italy: it is to be shown in full later in the NFT season, and from the extracts in this programme it looks unmissable. A long pas de deux with Fonteyn, shot in the half dark, would be worth the ticket money on its own, and then there's an interview with Nureyev which shows him so charming, mischievous, and clever that you could fall in love with him on the spot.

It's too long a film - 95 minutes - to mention everything, so from the rest I'll just pick out the things that struck me most. First of all there are all the other dancers you see, from the lovely Sizova in the Moscow Corsaire onwards: Fonteyn, of course (when a crass interviewer asks him how long he intends to 'keep' Fonteyn, he answers she is so great that it is necessary for him that he should dance with her); Makarova, in the Swan Lake Act 2 pas de deux in the courtyard of the Louvre (I think that was the season that ended in tears when they had a huge row and she walked out); and many dancers from the Paris Opera, including Florence Clerc dancing with Nureyev in a dress rehearsal of Raymonda in New York in 1986, with a tiny glimpse of young Legris and young Hilaire, and a simply gorgeous solo from 21-year old Sylvie Guillem. And it's amazing to see, in such close juxtaposition, how like Nureyev Charles Jude was.

Of the many shots of Nureyev himself, I think my favourite was the solo from Gayane which he did on American television - based on Kurdish dance, it was so full of life and wit, and done with such dazzling panache, that I was surprised the audience didn't stand up and cheer. I loved the extract from his own film of his production of Don Quixote, too - though that one is quite familiar, I'm astonished every time by how funny he is (and also, I'm afraid, by how lively the whole thing is in comparison with the Royal Ballet's revival last year). Most of the second half of the film focused on Nureyev's productions rather than on his own dancing, and I thought one of the most unexpectedly successful sections was the Snow scene from a film of his Nutcracker, directed by himself and looking both beautiful and interesting.

I don't see how anyone, even if they'd never even heard of Rudolf Nureyev, could fail to be moved by this film. The visual images are too striking, on a first viewing, to allow one to take in much of the film's thesis: watching him age, from the beautiful boy with the world at his feet to the dying man, from the days when he could do anything on stage to the time when only will power kept him going, is a reminder both of our good fortune and of our great loss.

Katharine, or anyone based in France: is there any chance this is still available?

>And it's amazing to see,
>in such close juxtaposition, how
>like Nureyev Charles Jude was.

Yes, I remember at the commemorative gala at the Coliseum back in 1994 that I had to look twice to make sure it actually wasn't Nureyev dancing!

There was the ubiquitous Le Corsaire pdd, but still worth seeing (time and time again, as far as I'm concerned) - and was it just that I was at the side of the auditorium, or was it a different angle from usual?.

This is Rudolf Nureyev (1964) was a black and white film (made by 2 documentary filmmakers who'd gone to Spoleto to make a film about something completely different, but then discovered that Nureyev was there, mounting his production of Raymonda (this was when Fonteyn had to return home suddenly following her husband's shooting and was replaced by Doreen Wells; both Wells and David Wall were at the NFT and gave short speeches). This repeated some of the rehearsal footage of Fonteyn and Nureyev that I was raving about from an earlier programme.

Le Jeune Homme et La Mort (1966) with Zizi Jeanmaire - a work I hadn't seen before, and very interesting, but didn't they cut off the ending? I was sure that I'd read something about a final scene on the rooftops of Paris after he dies, and my Balanchine's Book of Ballets certainly confirms this.

Instead of the equally ubiquitous balcony pdd with Fonteyn, a rarity: Romeo & Juliet Balcony pas de deux (1971) with Lynn Seymour - not sure where it was filmed, but it certainly didn't appear to be with the usual sets, and lovely to get a chance to see Seymour in the role she created. Finally, Diane and Acteon (Bell Telephone Hour 1964) with Svetlana Beriosova - what I suspect is a rare chance (and my first, I think) to see this lovely dancer.

I don't think this film ever had the ending you describe. The first time I saw it, it was shown as a companion piece to the film I am a Dancer and it ended with the suicide. I saw it again in Paris at the Carnavalet Museum in '97 when they mounted a Nureyev exhibition and it had the same ending. I don't think its been pruned for the NFT.

>Instead of the equally ubiquitous balcony
>pdd with Fonteyn, a rarity:
>Romeo & Juliet Balcony pas
>de deux (1971) with Lynn
>Seymour - not sure where
>it was filmed, but it
>certainly didn't appear to be
>with the usual sets, and
>lovely to get a chance
>to see Seymour in the
>role she created.

This made me feel very nostalgic for the good old days when the beeb took the arts seriously. I'm 99% certain this was an extract from the BBC programme Gala Performance, usually (but not always) filmed at Sadlers Wells in front of an invited audience. This programme went out at irregular intervals for years, with programmes including classical music, ballet and opera. Galina and Valery Panov first danced in London at one of these events and I distinctly remember a Don Q pas de deux with Markarova and Baryshnikov.

It wasn't easy to get tickets for Gala Performance and I can remember queuing outside the Wells for hours to get in with a handful of other hard-core ballet fans. Happy days! Anyone else remember back that far?

BTW, if anyone's going to tonight's could they possibly review it, and make me insanely jealous, no doubt?

All but one of last night's excerpts were from programmes originally made for television. The first one was introduced by Monica Mason - who must by now be getting used to being greeted with the warmest of applause whenever she appears - and who remembers Nureyev from the very first time he ever came to take class with the Royal Ballet. She spoke almost with passion of her gratitude for the privilege of working with him, and for the way he had influenced her own dancing career and those of many others. 'He always took us to the edge of the cliff - he made us give to the absolute limit of our ability and our talent.'

This programme began and ended with two pas de deux for Nureyev with Fonteyn, possibly the two highlights of the evening for me. Both were in black and white, filmed with at most two cameras in tiny spaces. The first one, the pas de deux from Act 2 of Giselle, was Nureyev's British television debut - he looked impossibly young, and very much a child of the sixties. Fonteyn was astonishing - you start by thinking 'she's not doing much' and then suddenly find you have tears in your eyes, because what she is doing is just perfect. Watching the absolute simplicity of her arms, or the light dying in her eyes as she returns to her grave, should be made compulsory for every young dancer learning the role. The second pas de deux was from Anisimova's Gayane - I'd only ever seen still photos of it before, and had no idea of how full of joy and charm it is.

Not all of the rest of the evening was at quite this standard, but every item had something to fascinate (or to amuse, in the case of the Muppets, and Morecambe and Wise.) It's not every night, for instance, that you see an Ashton piece for the first time - the Hamlet Prelude from the Queen's Silver Jubilee Gala in 1977. I thought this took some time to get going - lots of Ondine-like movement for Fonteyn at the beginning, and some fairly generalised emoting for Nureyev, but the last section, with Ophelia going mad as she snatches at Hamlet's feet, and drowning in swirls of white chiffon, was surprisingly powerful. Nureyev and Makarova did the Black Swan pas de deux, in a Gala Performance programme - Makarova looking cheerful rather than vampish - and Liz Robertson joined him in the 'Shall we Dance' section from The King and I. The longest item in this programme was a documentary about the Dutch National Ballet, with Nureyev rehearsing Apollo and learning Rudi van Danzig's Monument to a Dead Boy, one of his first excursions into modern dance.

The second programme had much more of Nureyev talking to interviewers - a long Omnibus discussion with Lindsay Anderson, and a shorter talk with Barry Norman in an item about La Bayadere. Nureyev was rehearsing Bryony Brind for a revival of his production of the Shades scene in 1982, when he'd picked her out from the ranks of junior soloists to dance with him. It was lovely to watch her again, but the shot which will haunt me most was the one where the camera pulled back from Nureyev discussing her with Norman, and agreeing that she could reach the greatest heights - they were talking in a corner of the studio, absolutely surrounded by television cameras, lights, and dozens of photographers; and there was Brind, sitting on the floor a few yards away, entirely alone and unnoticed. (The other interesting about this piece was Nureyev's forthright views on his treatment by the Royal Ballet, politely translated by Norman as 'buckets of manure' landing on him.) The Anderson interview was full of insights and unexpected opinions. Nureyev said he was always nervous before and during performances, but 'they pay us for our fear'. And asked if ballet had stopped developing, 'Maybe it should not not develop: maybe it should always be the opposite, the contrary'. The longest section of this half of the evening was a complete performance of Les Sylphides, taken from the 1963 film An Evening with the Royal Ballet. Compared with how the company might dance this today, I thought it was less glossy but very expressive and musical. Two versions of the Flower Festival Genzano completed the programme with Merle Park (from a Gala performance, introduced by Christopher Gable) and Maria Tallchief (Nureyev's US television debut, on the Bell Telephone Hour, with a short commercial to prove it).

There's one more programme left, a showing of the documentary about the making of Raymonda, on Friday, but if last night was anything to go by there won't be many tickets going.

It contains quite a bit more than just the Raymonda film (see posting 9 above).

Thanks, Jane - I am duly insanely jealous