"Nureyev: The Russian Years" on PBS August 29

PBS's Great Performances series will detail the very beginning of Rudolf Nureyev's career in "Nureyev: The Russian Years," which begins airing on August 29. We first spotted news of it at the Arts and Dance blog of Laura Bleiberg at the Orange County Register. See more at the New Yorker's web site, which notes that

... in the old performance footage, some of it never released before, we can see the beginnings of his very individual style, notably the hyperstretched torso. (This was considered effeminate when he introduced it. Now it is standard.)

... The program also ... makes his defection as exciting as a police drama.

There's also the unflinching (sometimes brutal) story from LA Times writer Lewis Segal, entitled, "Nureyev: dancing around the lies." It starts off with:

Rudolf Nureyev lied about his life so often, to so many people, that any responsible biographer or documentarian must virtually cross-examine every living source to separate his extravagant fictions from bottom-line certainties.

No matter how one may feel about Nureyev the man, however, Segal does wrap up with writer-producer John Bridcut's observation about Nureyev's enduring ability to captivate and inspire people:

During his phone interview, Bridcut recalled that a lot of people working on "Nureyev: The Russian Years" approached him, "people who had no interest in ballet at all, like those who helped me edit the film and handled the sound, that sort of thing. And they said they were completely captivated by this man, particularly by that footage of him dancing in Moscow in 1958 [age 20], the first footage there is of him.

"They thought ballet meant nothing to them, and suddenly they were spellbound by him. And this is what all the people who saw him in the flesh still say. I found this really interesting -- that even now he remains a door into the world of ballet for people who are not otherwise drawn to it."

This is something we have discovered ourselves here at the Nureyev Legacy Project.


A curious footnote: Apparently, BBC HD is running the same documentary (beginning September 19), but calling it "Nureyev: From Russia with Love." What are we to make of the title change? Does PBS think U.S. audiences won't recognize the James Bond reference? Or do they think such a title would be too cavalier for such a severe figure as Nureyev? Or did the BBC "sex up" the title for the HD audience, which at this point likely has a larger proportion of football fans (both kinds) and action-movie aficionados than it does ballet enthusiasts?