Rudi – Aging – Dancers that Cannot Quit

By the time I met Rudolf Nureyev, he was clearly aging. At the very old ballet dancer age of forty, he was showing the signs of the constant wear and tear on his body.
Watching him, it was clear that growing old gracefully does not work for racehorses or ballet dancers. That is why it often seems that before the heart and mind are ready, both get put out to pasture.
Ballet is a hard-knocks artistic sporting event. We dance on wood floors, in our day, upon which we only have a small slip of leather or point shoe to protect us from the ravages of gravity.
But gravity always wins.

Aging in the ballet world is a painful thing to watch and even more painful to experience.
Day after day, the pounding of the joints on hard wooden floors is bound to take a toll on the body. Even a rock will eventually break down from such abuse.
But the fire of the heart is an unquenchable force in a dancer that will continuously try to override the limitations of the body in any way possible.
It is the nature of dance to create illusions of lift and light while experiencing pain and soreness.
Every day, every dancer comes into the studio to warm up stiff and sore. The older the dancer the more groaning you will hear.
The cold body is a stiff body.

An old body is a stiffer body.
Rudi was older than most and had a difficult childhood. He started late into the dancing profession and had never gotten the chance when younger and when he had the potential to cultivate more flexibility and turnout, to have certain body expressions to support his powerful will.
He was a dancer whose power was in his heart, his mind, and his determination. When one is young, the powerful leaps are expected and seem effortless. But as one ages, the knees, ankles, and hips begin to break down. Then to compensate the dancer will overuse his or her back to support the force of the landing projecting into those joints that are beginning to wear out.
All male dancers have an added challenge and that is in carrying around ballerinas over their head. Not only does a male dancer have to dance but he has to be the stabilizer to the ballerina. And as Balanchine said, “Ballet is woman!”
In truth, until Nureyev came around, male dancers were mostly props for the ballerina. Nureyev came along and suddenly showed that the male dancer could be as powerful as a ballerina and could be the center and the showcase of a ballet. This revolutionized the ballet world and has inspired countless generations of male dancers to move out of the background and into the spotlight.
But by the time I met Nureyev, he was beginning to fall apart.
Watching him do daily class showed what he was up against. The powerful will of Rudi was constantly pushing his body to attempt to do what it had done for so long but now the body seemed to be fighting back. Watching him in class seemed to be a lesson about taking a body that was stiff and sore and forcing it to warm up, get moving, and do what was asked. He looked like an old work horse determined to do what was asked but internally wondering how much longer he could do it.
His grande allegro (or big jumps) were not big. The positions in the air were strained as if he was pulling himself up by his neck muscles and his chest. He looked like an injured bird that struggled to fly and could barely get up off the ground.
His incredible musculature was still chiseled and sharply defined but all the strength seemed to add to the lack of flexibility. It was as if he was slowly turning into a stone. A beautiful piece of marble sculpted by Michelangelo but still … stone.
His face was lined with age and an internal knowing that the inevitable was stalking him and yet he was going to fight tooth-and-nail till the bitter end.
His eyes looked out on a world that understood art and beauty in ways that most would never conceive but in his heart, he was a dancer … not a teacher, not a choreographer, and not an Artistic Director of a ballet company.
Though he would go pm to do all of these, I mean to say that in his heart, those were not his passions. Dancing ballet was his passion.
He did not have the patience of a teacher.
He did not have the creative fluidity of an organic choreographer. Though he was wonderful at setting classical ballets from all his years of dancing and bringing those Russian elegances into the West.
He was not an Artistic Director of a Ballet Company because he could not play the incessant games of politics that such a position required. Budgets did not matter to him. He wanted things a certain way and he did not care about the cost.
But through it all, how he stood at the bar showed a level of professional commitment to the process of dance that took my breath away.
He made me think, “How many plies’ has he done over the decades? How many ballerinas has he danced with and held up over his head? How many theaters has he danced in?”
There is nothing pretty about an aging dancer that does not know how to stop. But it is a marvel to witness. Few have had his level of commitment to keep going in the face of inevitable destruction.
Dancers know when they are running out of time. Some can continue because they have the perfect facility and body. Some bodies have better staying power than others. But most dancers know that they want to quit before they embarrass themselves.
Nureyev, needed to dance. It was air to him. That was always obvious watching him. He needed to be seen. He needed to be admired. He needed to be a god amongst men.
Watching him those four years in Berlin taught me a lot about knowing when to quit and knowing that my life had to be more than just ballet.
While my heart beats to all music still and my nose will forever smell rosin from the studio, I knew I could not just be a one trick pony for ballet.
Rudolf Nureyev was a racehorse. A thoroughbred Friesian that knew he was majestic and powerful. He was that wild eyed stallion that loved to allow the air to move his long and wavy mane and he understood that elegance of moment conveyed more than words could. He knew that his eyes were expressive, and he moved as he aged into roles that allowed that refined look from his sculpted face to tell the story because his body could not.
As his body betrayed his fiery spirit … his mind found other ways to express the art that poured from his very being.
In later years, watching him perform became more difficult to watch. One could see the pain and the suffering leaking out his body and out into the audience. It reminded us not of the illusion of ballet anymore but the fate that we all face in the aging process. Most found that reflection uncomfortable to witness and some found it aggravating and distasteful.
Nureyev showed all of us the truth of who he was in every moment. Even those painful moments of an aging dancer past his prime and running out of time.
But what I know from looking in his eyes … was that he still saw the light that he would forever reach towards. He still could feel that feeling of flight inside his soul. And even in death, he is still dancing because that was who and what he was deep down in his core.
It was a great honor to dance with him.
Now upon reflecting back, his temper-tantrums that used to make me cringe, just make me smile. His tempestuous nature reminds me that there are only the limits we allow others to place upon us or the limits in our own mind. And he reminds me that the best art may not always be pretty. But it will still help us grow … if it is honest.
~Suzanne Wagner~