Original subtitles

There is something in the background of any Russian,

whether he be Jewish or a Tartar or a combination,

which dramatizes a situation...

which is more potent,

more intense.

It probably comes from the fact

that they have such an otherwise difficult life,

and has always been for hundreds of years,

between snow and mud

and almost attached like a harness

to the earth and to the problems of life.

It enables them when they are liberated on the stage

to live life as they would have liked to have lived it,

with all the abandon and the capacity for focusing,

for dramatizing, for intensifying the emotion and the thought.

It's as if the sun were shining through a lens

and you focused it on something and it started burning

so that the whole life, the whole universe,

focuses itself through the greatest Russians,

and they start burning and burning up the audience, burning up themselves.

NUREYEV: I was born on a train on the Trans-Siberian railroad.

My father was on service, military service, in Manchuria.

And so he called my mother,

and three of the children, to come over to join him.

The trip was very long. It's about 12 days.

So I was shaken out of the womb by the Lake Baikal.

MENUHIN: I suppose with Nureyev, I felt the same kind of the sense of intensity,

the same kind of abandon,

which a great artist has at the height of his powers.

Nureyev was a human panther.

He had that incredible animal greatness and power.

At the same time, he was a human being.

It is something that lends an intensity of presence

which is overwhelming.

But the great, vast audience

is always fascinated by a superhuman man.

He was a phenomenon

and he knew it, of course, and sometimes he knew it too well

but thus he was a phenomenon,

and sadly destined, I imagine,

to consume himself and to live to the hilt.

I know you don't like talking about your background

because you have a very unromantic view of it,

but it is an extraordinary background that you came from.

I mean, it was a very, very poor background, wasn't it?

Well, it's true.

PARKINSON: There wasn't, it seemed to me, much chance.

People wouldn't have put a lot of money on you becoming what you are now

from where you were born.

Well, I guess that... there wasn't much money around.

Well, it wouldn't buy anything anyway.

During the war, we had to evacuate from Moscow and...

- Then, of course, it was very tough. - PARKINSON: But how tough?

Once the war began and the family were evacuated,

they were in the southern Urals Mountains, in Bashkiria, in Ufa.

Because they are refugees, they are living in very bad conditions.

Certainly, food was very short.

(IN RUSSIAN) My mother told me that all the trees were stripped of bark

as high as a man could reach

because people were cooking and eating it.

(IN ENGLISH) "We'd sold everything we possessed

and everything we could possibly sell for food.

I remember very vividly that first day at kindergarten.

Mother dressed me in my sister Lara's coat.

And there is nothing more calculated to make a small boy of six feel foolish

than having to wear his sister's clothes.

Mother had to carry me to school on her back.

The moment they saw me,

all the children started to sing aloud in Tartar,

"We've got a bump in our class, we've got a bump in our class."

"Bump' meant a beggar.”

Can you remember the first moment you wanted to be a dancer?

- What was it? - Well, erm, that was a long time ago.

CAVETT: How long? It might not be as long as people think.

It was like 29 years ago.

His father was in the army so he didn't see his father till after the war ended.

He was brought up in a very interesting, kind of maternal, environment.

You might think of the war as being a toughening experience,

a kind of bad experience because he's exposed to all these horrors,

but in fact, he may have been in a softer, maternal environment

than he would've been if the war hadn't happened.

Certainly, his mother encouraged him to dance,

which might not have happened had his father been there.

NUREYEV: When my father came from the war,

my mother conveyed to him my wish to be a dancer

and he was adamant against any kind of dancing.

CAVETT: How did you solve that?

I ran away each time at night and went to...

to take some lesson in folklore groups and dance with them.

PHILLIPS: "When I was 11,

I met for the first time a woman,

a very old woman, Udelsova...

who was almost a real ballet teacher.

She had never really been a teacher,

but she was extremely musical, highly cultivated,

and had danced years and years ago

in the corps de ballet of Diaghilev's Ballets Russes.

I became extremely close to that remarkable old woman of 70,

who, every summer, took a trip to Leningrad

to see what was new in the world of ballet.

Once back in Ufa, she described everything to us...

opening up our provincial eyes to a far wider scene."

(IN RUSSIAN) When Rudolf grew up a little, he joined the Pioneers' Club

and started taking dance lessons there.

NUREYEV: Each time I ran to the class, my father beat me up,

because he didn't want to have a sissy in his home.

He had had to fight every inch of the way to become a dancer.

NUREYEV: I wanted to go to Leningrad school.

My sister said, "Oh, there is only one train.

That train you should take."

The trip was very long.

To arrive to Moscow, it's about three days by train.

Then 16 hours to go to Leningrad.

From Ufa, the last place God made,

to Leningrad and the Holy of Holies,

the Vaganova school and the great teacher, Pushkin.

Hurrah, bravo for him!

It was triumph of will, like with Napoleon, you know.

It's extraordinary, and it showed.

MAWDSLEY: He goes very rapidly into the main Kirov company as a soloist.

(LE CORSAIRE BY BERLIOZ)

(COMMENTARY IN RUSSIAN)

- WOMAN WHISPERS IN RUSSIAN)

(MAN AND WOMAN WHISPER IN RUSSIAN)

(IN RUSSIAN) My godmother was a well-known dressmaker.

She brought me up.

Everybody knew when they came to us, they had to ring the bell three times;

one, two, three, and no other way.

If the doorbell rang differently, we knew who it was...

Her assistants and I would quickly grab the cloth

and run to the back stairs to hide

so the cloth wouldn't be taken away from her.

That was the hardest,

the most difficult,

the most disgusting period in our life and in our country I believe,

when such a surveillance was in place.

(WHISPERING IN RUSSIAN)

Now, Nureyev, I met him in Leningrad.

Of course, he was a great legend, and his name was very well known,

and he was very popular, everybody loved him.

He was very great, and he was very, very famous.

Already, everybody knew that he was a wild one.

I remember once, my first year, I went into the theatre

to see Swan Lake or something.

When I came back to where we lodged, the door was locked.

NUREYEV: They made me bang the door for very long time,

then they let me in and they said,

"We punished you that you went to the theatre.”

And they took my mattress away.

And next morning,

erm... they didn't give me my breakfast and lunch.

So I went to my friend's and had the breakfast there.

His family were not well educated and he was really astonished,

seeing my sister, me and friends of mine

who loved poetry, painting, music,

and because of it, he enjoyed to be with us.

We both graduated from the Polytechnical Institute.

I graduated from Radio-Technical Faculty

and my brother from Electro-Mechanical.

So we worked in the science.

ROMANKOV: It was forbidden for us to go abroad.

We couldn't see the new refrigerators, new cars, and so on,

but it absolutely wasn't important for us.

MYASNIKOVA: The social life and socialism wasn't very active

outside of the apartment.

Friends go together in the apartment

or, most of the time, the kitchen.

We called it Kitchen Culture.

(IN RUSSIAN) I was studying Russian language and literature at university.

Rudolf would come to classes with me.

The dean gave his permission and said,

"Of course! Let the youngsters advance.

It is so encouraging to see a ballet dancer so keen to learn.”

(IN ENGLISH) In this period of 1950s, 1960s,

it's now the time of the Cold War.

There are the big two.

There's Russia and there's the United States.

You have a political competition, you have a military competition,

and you have this cultural competition.

(¢ WALTZ)

It's an asymmetrical competition in that the West has...

United States, in particular, has a lot of consumer goods.

It produces material things like refrigerators

and washing machines, and cars and so on.

But the Russians can argue that they have a superior culture.

When you compare the West and the East, the Russians can say,

"We haven't got refrigerators,

but we have the best ballet companies in the world."

( "ALL HAVE TO DO IS DREAM" BY THE EVERLY BROTHERS)

Rock and roll is considered by our authorities

bourgeois music, very bad.

And it was highly criticised.

We could get this Röntgen film from the physicians.

And we designed some special devices

to record the sounds.

When you saw these records,

you could see some ribs

or some part of human bones.

Then the weekends, we used these records,

and we were dancing.

("APACHE" BY THE SHADOWS)

And then we'd compete with each other.

And we decided that the winner will be the guy

who could throw a girl so high

that the traces of her heels

would remain on the ceiling.

And Rudolf put his faith in it, but not very often,

because he was very much afraid

to do something bad with his legs.

But he liked it very much.

PHILLIPS: I look back now with a touch of sadness

on those moments with such pleasant, perfect friends.

My scientist and her brother and Tamara,

a lovely student who never missed a single one of my performances.

The Soviet Union was looking for individuals

that represented the new Soviet man.

They were nationalistic,

they demonstrated a sense of duty, camaraderie,

they were respectful, they often came from humble beginnings,

and were risen up through education from the Soviet state.

In this sense, Gagarin and Nureyev played a similar role

within the Soviet propaganda machine, as representing the new Soviet man.

So a defection would have been horrendous.

The Bolshoi and the Kirov are weapons.

Khrushchev must use culture

to develop the strength of Russian prestige outside Russia.

So it's in Khrushchev's interests in 1961 to have a tour of the Kirov.

The first leg was in Paris, and then, of course, from Paris,

they were coming straight to London.

(IN RUSSIAN) At that time, it was the first tour to Paris.

Every tour is significant for the theatre,

as well as for those who dance there.

But Paris is a centre of culture.

It's as if once you've been recognised in Paris,

it also means you will be recognised by the whole world.

MAWDSLEY: They want Russia to seem to be very progressive,

they want Russia to seem to be a very culturally strong kind of place,

without running great risks.

But the problem is that if you want to make the maximum splash,

you have to have the very best people. You can't run the hacks past them.

It has to be something which is original and new and powerful,

and Nureyev's got that.

But with Nureyev, you can't have both.

You've got to take this Nijinsky-like figure

who you'll allow to travel on the West, but you don't really trust him.

("UN CLAIR DE LUNE A MAUBEUGE" BY CLAUDE FRANCOIS)

(IN RUSSIAN) We were totally into the underground nightlife at the time

and it was a real challenge to return unseen early in the morning.

All these things were happening.

Rudolf was a free spirit.

"This is how I want my life to be and I will live it that way.

I don't want to live the way you order me to.

1 will walk my own path in life."

We knew it about many men, that he was not of "our” orientation.

They were walking around Paris, talking to French dancers

and meeting other people and coming back late.

Every day we were going outside with him

and he was so happy, you know.

He said, "I feel so free."

"It's fantastic for friendship with this French dancer, I'm so glad.”

He was very, very interested about everything.

MAWDSLEY: It was kind of like being in a frat house, basically.

He'd arrive back late at the hotel

and the KGB guy would give him a hard time for being out so late.

But they really couldn't touch him that much because they needed him.

LACOTTE: We had a new friend who came in the group, Clara,

who was very beautiful, very nice and very well educated,

and she was a fiancée with the son of André Malraux,

First Minister of Culture.

We went to the first time that he will dance.

And the public was so crazy about him, they start to applaud and bravo,

and it was, you know, he had to go so many times. It was a triumph.

But the Soviets suddenly realise

that this personal success

undermines the general success of the whole company,

so the artistic director, they decided that, for England,

we don't want this kind of singling-out.

The KGB minders say, "He's getting out of control, he's not obeying orders.”

And they say, "Bring him back,"

and the people in Paris, including the ambassador say,

"No, keep him here," because they love him,

he's filling big halls, and people are coming to see the Kirov,

and he's the big draw.

Stupid idiots who thought they were going to get away

with sending him back to Russia.

Already, he was at the airport already!

NUREYEV: When we came to the airport,

suddenly they said, "You don't have a place on that plane.”

I thought that was extraordinary, and the man who had enormous success for...

brought enormous success to Kirov Ballet,

had no place on that plane.

They could have taken somebody else, but to say, "Ah..."

Then somebody said, "Ah, Khrushchev wants to see you dance at the Kremlin."

"Oh, who with? What costumes?" "Oh, you'll find there." "Ah."

And when I arrived to the airport,

I saw the face of Rudolf changing completely, so sad!

I said, "What happened?” And he said, "Pierre, I'm finished."

"I have to come back to Russia.

I'm not going to London. So, do something or I'll kill myself!"

PHILLIPS: "I felt in a daze,

but I asked someone to ring Clara and say goodbye,

feeling I'd never have the chance to see her again.”

LACOTTE: The company went to take the plane.

Everybody go to him to say goodbye.

Osipenko was crying.

(IN RUSSIAN) I said, "Rudolf, please don't worry.

1 will board the plane. Our general manager is already there.

1 will explain everything and you will fly with us."

So I boarded the plane.

And I said to the manager, "What are you doing?!

Rudolf cannot be left behind.

I need him. I dance with him.

You know the type of character he is.”

He replied, "Alla, I can't do anything more.

Nureyev is flying to Moscow."

God forbid something happens. I never imagine, of course.

It's just that, at the time, I did not understand what could happen.

I said, "This is madness, simple madness."

(IN ENGLISH) The dilemma is that he can leave and he can defect.

And if he does that, if he stays in the West,

he will almost certainly never go back.

He won't see his mother again,

won't see his father again or his sisters.

The other part of the dilemma is

that because he's given them a hard time in Paris,

and because of that, he's being sent back to Russia, sort of in disgrace,

the implications of that are that his career in Russia

will also be very difficult.

You know, he'll be sent to the provinces.

PHILLIPS: "I'd felt the threat mounting.

I was like a bird inside a net being drawn tighter and tighter.

I knew this was a crisis, for a bird must fly."

So I decide right there and then that I'm not going back.

PHILLIPS: "I saw Clara arrive. I cried out to her that I had taken my decision.

That was all she needed to hear.

She rushed to the two inspectors on duty at the airport

and told them there is a Russian dancer downstairs who wants to stay in France.

The inspectors told her that they had no right to kidnap me,

but that they were empowered to help me and then protect me,

if I was fully aware of the implications of my decision."

LACOTTE: She came back behind me and said, "Pierre, here, it's done.”

PHILLIPS: "Everything seemed to become blurred. I felt the urge to run,

yet for a second which seemed like an eternity,

my muscles were so heavy that they might have been made of lead.

I thought I would never be able to move."

LACOTTE: There is all these KGB, around him in a circle,

so I was not able even to talk to him.

PHILLIPS: "And then in the longest, most breath-taking leap

of my whole career,

I landed squarely in the arms of the two inspectors.

'I want to stay', I gasped, 'I want to stay.'

LACOTTE: And all the French policemen run out with him,

the KGB run, they start to struggle between each other, and it was done.

PHILLIPS: "The inspectors explained that according to the rules,

I must spend five minutes alone in a room

to reflect, away from all pressures, on the decision I was about to take.

The room had two doors.

Should I decide to go back to Russia, one door would lead me discreetly back

to the hall from whence I could board the Tupolev.

Should I decide to stay in France,

the other door led into their own private office.

Two exits to two different lives.

For me, this was already a return to dignity,

the right I cherish most of all: that of self-determination.”

REPORTER: This is France, the streets of Paris,

and this is a Communist parade.

All these people are Communists, and there's a lot of them.

They march along shouting the same slogans

that are shouted on Red Army Square.

Look and listen for a moment.

PARKINSON: I also read too, that after you'd defected,

that you were followed by these Soviet agents

in the immediate time after

and that they were present at your first performance

when you danced and heckled you.

It's not them, no, no no. I think it was really, I don't know...

I think Communist Party or group somewhere.

They were throwing tear-gas bombs and broken glass on stage.

It was an incredible hullabaloo in Paris.

PARKINSON: And how did you manage to concentrate while that was happening?

Tough it, you know.

I was the last girl on the left side in the Polonaise,

so when he came out of the wings, I had him fussing in front of me.

And I'll never forget his eyes, his look.

He was petrified.

Petrified with fear but nothing would have stopped him.

In 1961, Yuri Gagarin became the first human in outer space,

which was a huge propaganda victory

for the Soviet Union around the world.

But just two months later, another major Soviet icon, Nureyev, defected,

which the West seized upon as a failure for the Soviet Union,

crashing back down to earth.

The ideological conflict between the two sides was escalating,

and just two months after Nureyev defected from the Soviet Union,

the Berlin Wall was erected in Germany,

sort of symbolically embodying this conflict between the two sides.

("CUPID" BY SAM COOKE)

PHILLIPS: "Shortly after the unpleasantness at the theatre,

I spent a few days' holiday in France.

I was due to dance in Deauville in August

and until then, life passed rather uneventfully.

The only person I met during that time who left an indelible impression

was the American photographer Richard Avedon.

He had asked me to come to his studio for some portraits.

When I actually saw the pictures he'd taken,

I knew that he had understood me."

Erik Bruhn was the dancer of the day.

I watched this man dance and felt this was so extraordinary,

that I went to my publisher and I said "I want to do a book about this man."

(SIGHS) We were all, all my generation, us girls,

were in love with Erik Bruhn.

He had this accent, Danish accent,

which was, funnily enough, quite sexy. It twisted the words somehow.

He had seen me dance in Russia.

- On film. - INTERVIEWER: He had?

BRUHN: His teacher Pushkin had said,

"This is the dancer you have to watch, you can learn something from him."

Rudolf said to himself, "This is the man I want to emulate,

and I'm going to do that under any circumstances."

For me, he is a tremendous actor,

tremendous dancer, tremendous creator.

GRUEN: Nureyev immediately took a plane to Copenhagen

and the two men met.

And not only was this a meeting of two giants of the dance,

but the 23-year-old Nureyev took one look at Erik and...

Well, it's magic. They fell in love.

I think I never met, never seen

any man on stage so great, so inspiring.

And so I believe I mean the same to him.

If it hadn't been for him, and his drive, his inspiration,

I was going to quit there.

He gave my career at least another ten years.

(IN RUSSIAN) That was June 16, 1961, when Rudolf defected.

I was told, "You are expelled from the university.

How can we qualify a person

as a teacher of Russian language and literature

when that person failed to see an enemy of the people right next to her?”

I was not allowed to leave the country for ten years.

I knew how to block things out,

saying to myself, "It is not vital to go to America.”

(IN ENGLISH) Ten years, I had no promotion.

The life at that time was very cruel.

Even for us, Rudolf's defection made a lot of problems.

(IN RUSSIAN) There was a court trial, where Rudolf was tried in absence.

MYASNIKOVA: (IN ENGLISH) Rudolf was sentenced to seven years in prison.

He was announced as a traitor of the homeland.

His father, he was a member of Party,

and for him, it was a real disaster.

Margot had known great fame.

I mean, people had camped out in the street for Margot

ever since she was a very young girl.

I think it was the war, really, that made her,

because they had to travel around the whole of Britain,

trying to cheer up the troops.

And people who had nothing else to do,

there was so little to do during the war,

that ballet somehow or other got a foothold in England.

So by the end of the war, she was beloved of the English public.

They really knew her, they knew her on a personal level,

they knew her, that she'd visited their town.

She had a very lyrical quality, she had something about her.

Robert Helpmann said about her,

she had the ability to make you want to cry.

Oh, Bill, isn't she wonderful?

Some other kid may say the same about you one day.

You stick to it and one day, you'll get to the top.

- Do you really think so, Bill? - Of course I do.

(THE NUTCRACKER BY TCHAIKOVSKY)

Well, everything about her was perfect. She was so kind to everyone, so nice.

Oh, Margot was heavenly, she was enchanting.

She was the most beautiful little bird.

The bearing of a queen, the bearing was exquisite.

So it was very difficult to understand what Margot Fonteyn was doing

landing in Panama with a Kalashnikov in her hands. (LAUGHS)

REPORTER: It was better than fiction at London airport.

Back only two days after release from Panama City Jail,

Dame Margot Fonteyn came home.

Self-possessed as though she were taking a bow,

the great ballerina prepared to face another ordeal: meeting the press.

All wanted to know whether she and her husband, Dr Roberto Arias,

had been in any plot to overthrow the government of Panama.

Tito was always trying to create a revolution

and he got together a whole lot of uniforms and guns.

And Margot was instrumental. I mean, she actually carried stuff out for him;

guns wrapped in sanitary towels, and God knows what.

It was a disgrace, actually.

The whole thing was a terrible, awful disgrace

and Margot was jailed, though not very seriously.

I mean, people were still giving her roses in jail. (LAUGHS)

And there were questions in Parliament and cartoons.

And it pissed off the Royal Ballet considerably.

And they distanced themselves from her at that time.

It was Margot Fonteyn who invited him

to dance at Drury Lane for a charity matinee.

She wasn't young, she was over 40 then.

Well, he wasn't exactly invited over, he arrived. (LAUGHS)

He had written to Margot and said,

"I want to appear in your gala and I want to dance with you."

I was privileged to find him and Margot at the same time.

To have the two of them at the height of their ecstasy,

because she had found a new life through him.

And he had found an elegance

which turned him perhaps from the lion to the panther.

It was an extraordinary moment.

I think after the first two rehearsals of Giselle, she trusted me.

Margot was what could only really be described

as incredibly lonely within her marriage.

Her heart had closed down, really.

And when Nureyev arrived on the scene, she resisted,

because she thought she was too old to dance with him.

It is total involvement and total investment.

She invests everything in me.

DANEMAN: When she succumbed to dancing with him

and realised the joy of it, her heart opened again,

and it made her so happy because she was brought back into the fold.

Because of him, her position at the top of the company then became inviolable.

I believe that our partnership wouldn't have been such a great success

were it not for the difference in our ages.

Because what happened was that I would go out on the stage

thinking, "Who is going to look at me with this young lion

leaping ten feet high in the air and doing all these fantastic things?"

And then Rudolf had really a deep respect

because I was this older, very famous, established ballerina,

so it sort of charged the performance that we were both going out there,

inspired by the other one, and somehow it just worked!

Then we moved on to Swan Lake.

We had a lot of differences.

I remember I said, "Well, your interpretation is fantastic.

But it is not my way, absolutely. I don't find a place for myself.

There will be no chance to have a conversation on stage,

so I better don't do it.

Or... it would be unfortunate you would have to change.”

And, erm...

She thought for a day and then said, "All right."

INTERVIEWER: She changed?

Yes, "I'll change, I'll do it your way."

(SWAN LAKE BY TCHAIKOVSKY)

It was like seeing something from outer space.

You know, men up until then had been sort of porteurs.

They'd stood behind their ballerinas and supported them,

and occasionally danced solos and things,

but there was the English style which was extremely polite and refined,

and this extraordinary, animalistic person appeared.

And from then on, the bar had been raised to such an extent.

People had become terribly possessive of it,

and thought, "That's our production.

How dare this fellow come from Russia and start to change it?"

(LAUGHS) And it did create a tension.

Of course, it did have a rather devastating effect

on the local population,

because you can imagine that a lot of the young dancers

were just working their way up to the top,

and suddenly this creature appears.

One member of the Covent Garden establishment said,

"Well, he was just like the Great War.

He wiped out a whole generation of English dancers.”

NUREYEV: We become one body, one soul.

We moved in one way, it was very complementary,

every arm movement or every head movement,

there were no more cultural gaps or age difference.

We'd been absorbed in characterisation, we became the part.

SULLIVAN: Get on the phone right now, call your friends and tell them

that Margot Fonteyn and Nureyev have been added

to tonight's program. Get right on the phone!

That kind of star quality

translated into super-charged performances.

And the audience went mad. I mean, they went mad!

("PLEASE, PLEASE ME" BY THE BEATLES)

I think we were well aware that it was a golden time.

I mean, footballers must have this all the time,

this yelling and screaming, it was unbelievable.

It was out of all proportion

to anything one had ever been accustomed to before.

We've come to see Rudolf Nureyev and Fonteyn.

Sometimes I tried to send him a letter,

but Rudolf was receiving piles and piles of letters from all over the world.

And they put them in a sack

and threw it away

because it was impossible even to look through.

So I believe that my letters were buried in these sacks.

Wonderful, but just slightly crazy.

It was like Beatlemania, but it was balletmania.

- Now, do you know the Beatles? - Yes, I know the Beatles.

What do you think about them? (REPEATS QUESTION IN SPANISH)

Well, they are very interesting guys. And they sing rather well.

What else do you want?

I was at this terribly smart dinner party in Belgravia.

Everyone was there to meet Nureyev,

who was performing and he was coming after the show.

So we were maybe 14 people sitting there,

all very gussied up, and it was all very formal.

And the door burst open at about 11 o'clock, and Nureyev arrived.

And everybody in the room changed, everybody went, "Oh, my God, he's here!"

And somebody said, "Oh, do get him a drink."

And he did that thing that great dancers do.

You know, they make ordinary gestures look wonderful.

He just turned and picked up a bottle of cherry brandy,

and he lifted it and he just drank the lot.

And the room was quite silent for a moment.

And then he seemed to levitate onto the table.

And it was beautifully laid with crystal and silver,

and he just walked down the table towards his hostess.

And in those days, every woman had her hair done in a very elaborate way,

with maybe four hair pieces on the top, you know, bits and pieces.

And he just reached out

and flicked the top hair off one of the guests.

And she was delighted, you know.

Instead of being cross, she went, "Oh, how wonderful "

I have never seen anyone be received like that.

NUREYEV: I speak very badly Russian,

very badly in English, very badly in French, very badly in Italian,

and my own language, I almost totally forgot... Tartar.

(SPEAKS TARTAR)

CAVETT: Let's talk about your terrible temper for a moment.

OK.

CAVETT: I've always heard that you were quite temperamental and moody,

as all artists are. I am, in fact, and...

I just wondered if you suddenly got mad at me while we were talking here...

I wouldn't get suddenly mad, I wouldn't get suddenly mad.

But if you will be persistent with some quite idiotic question...

- ...and have it come back,

reoccur in different form and nagging,

you know, you finally will get the yellow lights

- and then red lights come on.

PHILLIPS: "I don't consider us Nureyevs

as Russians in the strict sense of the word.

We are Tartars.

It is exactly 200 years

since the powerful and magnificent race of Bashkir warriors,

who for seven centuries had never known defeat,

were finally forced to surrender to Russia.

Lost in the Ural Steppes,

Bashkirs never lost the fierce, indomitable character

which made them feared in the Middle Ages

from Asia to the River Neva.

I can't exactly define what it is to be a Tartar and not a Russian,

but I see the difference in my flesh.

Qur Tartar blood runs faster, somehow. It is always ready to boil.

And yet it seems we are more languid than the Russians,

more sensuous.

We are a curious mixture of tenderness and brutality."

Very, very committed to what he did, and how.

And criticised himself as well, you know,

if he didn't get something right.

He'd go, "Shit," and kick.

Over the years, he had different people looking after him on stage

and he used to kick them, punch them, slap them.

I've seen all of that happening, you know,

and take it out on them, you know.

But it was all to do with how his performance was really.

I had a little boy who was playing the part of a page.

And he came up to me and he was so excited,

and he said, "Mr Nureyev spoke to me on stage.”

Front foot! Front foot!

OLIPHANT: And I said, "Oh, that's wonderful. Was he nice?"

And he said, "Well, he told me to fuck off."

So, I laughed and patted him on the back and congratulated him

for having Mr Nureyev speak to him.

Erm... Can you go... dum-dum...?

("TM WAITING FOR THE MAN" BY THE VELVET UNDERGROUND)

They were flying in high, high society, Fonteyn and Nureyev.

And then they got arrested in San Francisco.

And it was like the world stopped.

OFFICER: You're being charged with visiting a place

where narcotics were being used.

- I have no idea about that. - And disturbing the peace.

- No. None of that. - Those are the charges.

WATTS: There's like...

What do they call that when they arrest somebody for drunk driving?

There's, like, a picture, and usually, people look, like,

hung over and, like, a mess, and they're holding a sign...

And instead the picture came out,

and they're just sitting there, and she's in, I think, a fur coat.

They were so larger than life.

The number is 3191.

CHASE: There was Rudolf with a kind of almost contemptuous

but challenging look on his face, like, "You wish to look at me?"

OFFICER: OK, Rudolf.

- CHASE: "Please do." - OFFICER: Sign your name.

CHASE: "I'm Nureyev and you're not."

REPORTER: Will we see you this evening, Miss Fonteyn?

FONTEYN: Absolutely.

REPORTER: How about you, Rudi, will we see you this evening on stage?

It's only a job.

NUREYEV: Get on with it, driver!

It was a head-spinning time with Rudolf and Erik.

I mean, you just couldn't help falling in love with these guys.

I was in love with both of them!

We weren't like that with Rudolf.

We weren't in love like that with Rudolf,

we just loved him.

But with Erik Bruhn, you could hardly speak.

They were both perfect specimens of manhood in completely opposite ways.

I've never discussed, you know, personal stuff with Rudolf.

But what you could see was, it was two dancers

that tested each other.

(ROMEO AND JULIET BY PROKOFIEV)

I wouldn't be surprised if he and Margot were lovers.

I wouldn't be at all surprised. But I'm wondering...

God, there'd be an extraordinarily complex kind of nexus

of unconscious, sublimated feelings

about women, the mother, the maternal, the goddess.

I think there may have been something that was multi-layered

and very, very deep and very complex that brought those two together

besides the brilliance of the dance

and the purity of that kind of communication...

But, my God, when they did dance,

I think there was a reverential, profound love

that he had for her, and respect,

again, maybe interfused with who knows what else?

And that scene, the balcony scene...

I remember when he did some kind of variations

and he just exploded off the floor when he had come from that exchange,

and I get goosebumps thinking about it.

I remember seeing Romeo and Juliet

and the sheer theatricality of those performances,

just the feeling in the house, that they were going to be there,

it was like Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley,

Fonteyn and Nureyev.

They were Romeo and Juliet. That's what you saw.

Nureyev did not openly criticise the Soviet Union

because members of his family were still living there,

and they could be badly affected.

When the Kirov Ballet used to come to London and perform,

they used to give us Russian badges from the companies as presents.

So I collected quite a lot of them over the years.

And one evening, when Nureyev came to perform,

I was wearing some of them, and he went crazy.

He pulled them all off, threw them on the floor and stamped on them,

and said to me, "You're never to wear those here."

It was to do with his mother. He couldn't see his mother in Russia

and how dare me wear these Russian badges?

MAWDSLEY: He must have been very frustrated

that he could not express what he really felt.

One of the most direct ways

in which ballet and politics have been linked in Russian political history

is the use of Swan Lake on television as a filler

at a time when there is political crisis.

At least in the Brezhnev period, what they'd do is they'd play Swan Lake.

(SWAN LAKE BY TCHAIKOVSKY)

MAWDSLEY: The reason for that I think is that,

A, it's a great classic, you know, it's Tchaikovsky,

B, it's very melodic,

and C, it's about a community, you know, it's the swans.

They're all doing a pas de quatre together, they're all in formation,

they're doing what they need to do.

It's no accident that that's the work they use.

And tonight, Maria Tallchief and Erik Bruhn

will dance the grand pas de deux from Don Quixote.

(DON QUIXOTE BY MINKUS)

Rudolf, being who he is, did what he naturally would do.

He started to usurp the powers and the attention

that had heretofore been given to Erik Bruhn.

PRESENTER: Dancing with one of the world's leading ballerinas,

Maria Tallchief, is Rudolf Nureyev.

GRUEN: In fact, Erik began to be overshadowed

by this absolutely fiery young dancer.

They argue all the time.

One night, I was invited with both of them to dinner,

and they start to argue so much that I stand up, I said,

"Now, good night. I don't want to be the public of a big fight between you.

You shall have trouble.”

Maybe we were a bit like two comets, that were on its way, and we collided.

And there was an explosion,

and in that explosion, there was a meeting.

We were destined to have this collision.

- MAN: Yes. - BRUHN: The collision occurred.

When that happened, there's a point of no return forever,

except the memory of it, if you decide to think of that.

- MAN: Remember it? - BRUHN: Yes, remember it.

As he told me one day, you have to choose

between giving your energy to love a human being

or to love your art.

You have to choose, you can't have both.

He said, "Yes, you have to devote yourself to something,

or somebody eats completely up your life and you belong to that person,

and mentally, you belong, and everything you do is towards that person.

If you give yourself to art, nobody can take the place of art.

I mean, it's impossible.

They can accompany you as long as they can stand it,

but then if you lose them, you lose them, it's not important.”

As we say in French, "C'est un sacerdoce.” He chose his art.

Do you have a sense of belonging anywhere?

- Dance. - PARKINSON: Just dance?

- Not as a nationality, not a country? - No.

PARKINSON: You just exist for that and that alone.

(DANCE OF THE KNIGHTS FROM ROMEO AND JULIET BY PROKOFIEV)

At the time of Tito's assassination attempt, she was with Rudolf,

and she had been waiting to hear from Tito

because she was considering divorce.

She'd had enough of his infidelities, the way he treated her.

But her mother stepped in and said, "You must go to him.

What will the public say?" And that was the overriding thing in Margot's life.

What will the public say?

So, she got on a plane and went to him, and the minute she saw him,

she was completely horrified and changed.

And the story changed in her head.

That was the moment that Rudolf lost her

because she never would really give up on Tito from that moment on.

Rudolf and Margot had already blown dance out of the water.

And then Misha is, like, standing on those shoulders and doing it again,

so we get a double whammy, and it's Russia and it's Cold War.

You know, I danced with Misha at the White House in 1978,

and it was televised live.

Patricia McBride, Rudolf and myself and Misha danced with all three of us.

And so you're looking at America going,

"Look, we have a Russian dancing Balanchine,

another Russian to Stravinsky,

another Russian at the White House with two American ballerinas.

Now, take that one, Russia!"

You know, it was really... It's complicated.

And everything Rudolf did globally was complicated for the Russians.

CAVETT: This is not a political question.

I'll spare you all that, but...

Is there any sense in which you miss Russia?

The country itself?

Russians always talk about the great love of the land,

the mountains and the Steppes of Russia.

Well, I didn't have nostalgia, I haven't had yet.

I think it better come later to entertain me when I stop dancing.

REPORTER: For 16 years, he has tried and failed to gain permission

for his mother and sister to leave Russia.

In 1975, the USSR signs the Helsinki Final Act

and there's a big discussion about human rights,

and at that time, it's possible that Nureyev may have thought

this will allow more travel to be possible.

But this comes the year after

Solzhenitsyn is forced to leave the country

and a year after Baryshnikov has also come over to the West,

so it's a very confused kind of time.

REPORTER: Until today, Nureyev has said little in public

about his problem with the Soviet authority.

My mother went to office in Ufa, and they were trying to say,

"Why do you want to go to the West?

You are too old, you are tired, you are ill."

They were trying to force her to sign some kind of document...

that she doesn't want to come out.

So I appeal to you...

to help me.

("THE JEAN GENIE" BY DAVID BOWIE)

The atmosphere in New York was born out of

the liberation of the '60s, in every respect;

in women's lib, in sexual politics, in poetry and you know

just everything about culture was being questioned and changed.

And this fed the momentum of the '70s.

And the possibilities, the creative realm, just felt so free.

CAVETT: Would you want to work with Martha Graham?

Definitely, I mean this... she's a very, very great artist,

and to have something rub off from her would be great.

Rudolf came to see me backstage and just stood looking at me.

And we didn't talk about anything.

Finally, it came out.

He has an appetite for the new,

and he wants to experience everything to its fullest.

He said, "I do not mind if I make a fool of myself."

I remember going to those performances and the novelty of it,

to have a grand, romantically trained Soviet ballet dancer

in this beautifully earth-bound art form was incredible.

And the audience was filled with excitement about this.

When we saw the movie that Rudolf sent us...

When Rudolf did something in the classical style,

Udelsova was very satisfied,

but when he did something in the modern style,

she said, "I did not teach him to do it!"

CAVETT: Let's talk the intimate details of your private life.

- Yes? - (AUDIENCE LAUGHS)

- We'll go 50-507 - (LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE)

MAN: Come to Man's Country. See what we're all about, what we have to offer.

Man's Country is a full-facility, multi-level complex,

that was designed to feature something for everyone.

Come to Man's Country and develop your body

or a friendship with somebody else's.

Visit it just once, and you'll come again and again.

CAVETT: Do you have a theory about privacy, though? Is it important?

NUREYEV: It can go so much and no more.

CAVETT: I just wondered if you crave it after a performance.

Is it great to just get away, get away from the audience,

get away from being in public, being adored, as you are on stage?

Well, certain moments you do.

There should be moments where you have to regenerate yourself.

You see when you dance, it's difficult to sleep straight away,

so it takes, like, four, five hours to calm down.

I'm often in contact with young people.

And more often than not, people say, "I wish I could have lived in the 1980s.

That was the most amazing time and..." Da, da, da, da...

And of course, yes, in some ways it was.

But don't forget what else happened then.

("EVERYBODY KNOWS" BY LEONARD COHEN)

The year is '82,

and suddenly, we start hearing about boys dying, just dying, just dying.

And there's real fear.

The partying stopped, the fun stopped, and we started burying our friends.

It was like a war.

JULIA GRUEN: Only the young men get sent to war, and only they die.

WATTS: They're waiters at galas, or maybe actors or dancers,

who have come here to become artists, and they work in fancy catering,

and then they start wearing gloves

because all the rich people think they are going to get sick from gay people.

REPORTER: The Princess of Wales felt not the slightest apprehension

about her visit to the Middlesex Hospital and its AIDS ward.

All the speculation had centred on whether she would wear gloves

when shaking hands with the staff and patients.

CAVETT: If you're tempted to stay out all night, go to Coney Island,

what do you say to yourself?

Well, if you are tempted strongly enough, you will go. (LAUGHS)

You have real fun and it might also be profitable for performance.

WATTS: The bathhouse scene that helped proliferate AIDS,

they weren't asking to proliferate a virus they didn't know about.

There was a sexual revolution;

women were free, men were free, men and men were free,

there was an atmosphere of freedom,

and out of that, a terrible virus was spread unknowingly.

Our dear President, Ronald Reagan,

took maybe eight years before he even mentioned the word.

And if we'd had a civilised adult, a grown-up in the White House,

this disease would have been addressed with a vengeance.

REPORTER: But as she entered, to the delight of the staff,

she clearly wasn't wearing gloves,

and she shook hands with all ten patients on the ward.

CHASE: Princess Diana, when she did that,

just shamed everyone else,

all those vile right-wing nutcases, you know,

who were saying that AIDS is God's punishment.

Dance legacy lives in the bodies of the dancers

of each generation that are perpetuating it.

And when a lot of a generation is wiped out, it sets you back.

We lost a generation

of these remarkable creative movers and shakers.

It was devastating.

REPORTER: Last year, Americans were excited right on the street,

by the leader of a nation which they have in the past severely mistrusted.

In 1985, Gorbachev comes in because he will make the system work better,

and we think of this change as perestroika.

I always thought Gorbachev is...

erm... a great blessing, came... from heaven.

The guy is a PR genius. I mean, jumping out of the car like that, unbelievable.

Russia always dreamt of this enlightened ruler

to come down and show them the path.

- INTERVIEWER: A saviour! - NUREYEV: Second coming of Christ.

INTERVIEWER: Do you have family still in the Soviet Union, and how do they feel?

Are they taking freedom step by step?

It's almost like a gift that you don't dare open too fast.

I was not there but Fleming met him

at the hotel where everybody stayed at the time.

And he was having breakfast and then somebody came down and touched him,

and laughed, and it was this rusty laugh. (DEEP LAUGH)

Something Erik had, you know, too many smokes and too much whisky.

And then Fleming turns around and says, "Erik, what is it about your voice?"

And he said, "It's early morning."

But actually, I think that was what caused his death, that was the cancer.

I know this, that Rudolf was at Erik's deathbed.

Yeah, they were close to the very, very end.

They loved each other very much.

To have known them together

was to have known the two greatest dancers in the world.

VIVI FLINDT: For the eulogy and the memorial, I have his speech,

and there he uses the words from Shakespeare, from Hamlet,

"Sweet dreams, Prince of Denmark."

I wrote him a letter.

"The physician told me that your mother

will be alive maybe half a year, not more."

If you want to get good relations with the West

and if you want to have missile deals,

and you want to get your democratic bona fides shown,

you have to demonstrate what you're doing,

you have to allow people to travel back and forth.

He called me, he said, "They accept me to go to Russia to see my mother.”

I said, "It's fantastic." He said, "Yeah, it's a miracle.”

I said, "Go there and don't talk, don't make any trouble, be careful."

REPORTER: No VIP treatment for Rudolf Nureyev.

He queued with ordinary passengers for the customs search.

MYASNIKOVA: Rudolf invited me to go to Moscow to meet in the airport.

Sol met him, the first time after 28 years.

REPORTER: Nureyev was almost overcome at being back in his homeland.

I'm happy to be here, I'm happy that I will go and see my mother.

- REPORTER: How is she? - And my sisters.

Well, she's not very well, and that's as much as I can say.

Were you surprised to be given a visa to come here after all these years?

Well, not really, not really. I think the humane spirit should win eventually.

REPORTER: He has only three days

and must travel 800 miles to the city where his family still live.

MYASNIKOVA: Rudolf told me that his mother did not recognise him.

But it is not the truth, because the next day when Alfia asked her,

"Do you remember who was yesterday at our place?",

she said, "Rudik."

When he had problems, he liked to talk by night,

- at three o'clock in the morning. - (PHONE RINGS)

Each time, I said, "That is Rudolf."

"You know it's me, I hope I don't disturb you.

Yeah, we shall talk tomorrow."

I said, "Now I'm awake, what do you want to talk?"

He said one day,

"I call you because they asked me to come as a director of Paris Opera."

I said, "It's fantastic."

What he did with the Paris Opera,

which had fallen into a rather comfortable attitude of mind.

He wasn't going to have any nonsense, they were going to work!

And he was going to show them what the work involved.

His productions had a kind of energy that they'd acquired from him.

You couldn't just walk through it,

you had to dance your socks off,

because that's what was demanded by the production, by Nureyev himself,

by the whole tradition of the work, and it was absolutely wonderful.

Once I saw him in Paris Opera.

The ballet master is there,

and at one point, she had a pin,

and I don't know what happened.

Some blood fell on her hand because the pin was badly done,

and Rudolf just took her hand and said,

"Go wash your hands immediately. Go wash your hands immediately.”

So, Rudolf Nureyev, when his own health was compromised,

found himself in this grim, terrible, almost war-like condition.

And it was probably the last great challenge that he faced in his life,

and it was a hopeless one, since at the time he became sick,

it was essentially a death sentence. There was no treatment.

He would stay in my house. It was like having a panther in the house.

You didn't know if it was a male or a female or an animal.

It was that incredible intensity,

and hopefully, some of that may have come off in these drawings.

INTERVIEWER: As your birthday present,

would you want to go back to the Soviet Union to perform?

NUREYEV: Well, maybe.

- Maybe it's a good time. - INTERVIEWER: With the new Russia.

- Would you want to? - New Russia?

Maybe, maybe it would be a very good idea to put my productions on.

INTERVIEWER: I think it would be an honour for the entire world

for you to be giving of your genius on the Soviet stage.

It seems that this would be one of the final fair chapters in your life.

Thank you, and I know you have to go on to the ballet. I should let you.

You may think that way, I might think that way,

but they might not think that way at all.

INTERVIEWER: Well, perestroika. We must have some fairness.

(CROWD CHEERS)

I think the people here in Western Germany lived with the Wall since 1961

and I think that now it's time to break the Wall down, you know?

He came full circle. The Wall came crashing down,

just as he gave his first performance in his home country for nearly 30 years.

That had to be satisfying.

PHILLIPS: "When I was 11 I met for the first time a woman,

a very old woman, Udelsova."

(SPEAKS RUSSIAN)

PHILLIPS: "Udelsova was already one hundred years old."

(SPEAKS RUSSIAN)

MYASNIKOVA: It was a very touching meeting

and I was over there, and I saw it.

(SPEAKS RUSSIAN)

It's fantastic from here. I would like to take a picture from here,

I prepared all my repertoire on this stage.

Yes, I prepared Giselle, I prepared Swan Lake,

Le Corsaire, Laurencia, La Gayane.

It was all done here on this stage,

and when I went to Kirov three years later,

1 did all those ballets immediately.

- MAN: You had them done already? - Here.

(IN RUSSIAN) Suddenly people were shouting, "Where is Nureyev?

Margot Fonteyn needs a money transfer urgently.”

I knew that there was no money, anywhere.

Whatever there was Tito had spent.

ZAKRZHEVSKAYA (IN RUSSIAN): Until her last day

he was paying for her expensive clinic

so that they would take good care of her.

(ROMEO AND JULIET BY PROKOFIEV)

He went to see her in hospital

and she was being threatened with amputation at the time,

things were getting so bad for her.

And he said, "Don't worry about that. You can hop."

They were talking about how bad things were,

but he was not really coming clean about what was really wrong with him

and they talked on a level of cheering each other up,

but they were both completely heartbroken

by the sight of the other one.

He was lost when she died.

He would ring up people in the middle of the night

and just cry on the other end of the telephone,

not even say who it was and just cry.

And say things like, you know, "What's the point of the world now she's gone?"

He really, really did love her.

NUREYEV: It was very lucky for us to have those glorious years.

She became a very, very great friend of mine.

To me, she is a part of my family.

That's all what I have. Only her.

REPORTER: Mingling with the rush-hour traffic,

Red Army armoured personnel carriers on the streets of Moscow this morning,

heading to the Kremlin.

They first moved in at 4 am, the first sign of the coup d'état

that removed Mikhail Gorbachev from power.

One of the co-conspirators, in his memoir, he says,

"Well, we were so stupid, we thought,

we'll just play Swan Lake and they'll like it.

Because they were doing what Brezhnev had done

and what the Party leadership had done in the past

and that didn't cut it.

December 1991, the USSR does cease to exist,

and we enter a new era of history.

The next year, when he was already very ill,

it was birthday. It was the last birthday.

(SPEAKS RUSSIAN)

MAN: Yes, continue it.

- He was by then the dying man. - (PIANO MUSIC)

In his final six months, nine months,

he had to put on one of the masterpieces of Russian ballet, La Bayadére,

revered as one of the great examples of 19th-century ballet.

Very beautiful production, being superbly danced

by young dancers in the company.

It's the habit in the Paris Opera

to put critics in the very front row of the stalls,

right above the orchestra, from which you can see a great deal.

And it was possible to see

that in the loge on the right-hand side of the stage

there was this figure

lying on a bed or on a chaise longue or whatever.

And people were coming in.

And one knew that it was Nureyev.

Then at the end, all the applause, everyone fascinated,

the whole tra-la-la.

And suddenly he came on

and of course, the house went mad.

Cheers and cries,

and this tragic figure with a hat,

with a kind of cloak pulled round him as well.

The people were standing, shouting and cheering.

And then what was totally extraordinary and absolutely characteristic of him,

he walked towards us from these two, it was only a couple of steps,

but he raised his hand

and it was a last salute from this great artist.

The people his life had been devoted to

which were both his dancers and his audience.

It was... I mean tears, of course.

And cheers, but tears, you know, a desperate feeling of sorrow.

But it was a glorious farewell.

You know, Napoleon couldn't have done better.

(5 "ALL HAVE TO DO IS DREAM" BY THE EVERLY BROTHERS)

The last time I saw him, it was in the hospital.

We spent two weeks next to his bed.

And in the night, he died.

So I saw him up to the last moment.

I really think this man was exceptional.

I don't mean the Rudolf of photos

or make faces or scandals and all these cheapy things.

I mean the real man he was, the man that I knew when he started with Cuevas.

The man that I saw could pass away

with so much philosophy and resignation at the hospital.

I think he defended the world of ballet.

He loved ballet like a child could love a god.

I mean, he's... It was beautiful to see that.

I don't think he ever slept. He was just up and out all the time,

so actually he probably had a fuller life and a longer life

than any of us are ever going to have because he really hardly slept.

We loved doing this pas de deux, we were entwined,

within with each other all the time.

It was really the most sexiest thing I've ever done on stage.

He fought his way against the system

to express the art that was true to him.

But he was absolutely dedicated

and absolutely sure about the way he worked.

SIBLEY: He was such a special person.

It wasn't just what a great artist and a great dancer he was.

He was a very special person

and I feel very proud to have been part of it.

My special guest tonight, Rudolf Nureyev will join us in just a moment.

He has come directly to the studio from the stage at Lincoln Center,

which is just a few blocks away.

- Ladies and gentlemen, Rudolf Nureyev!

CAVETT: Incredible.

What have we done? I've no idea!

Would you like a glass of water, while we're...?

That's more than Mick Jagger got! I don't under...

Subtitles (English SDH): BTI Studios