Rare, Unseen Photos of Nureyev

A new coffee-table book from the archives of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts offers readers a fresh look at 20th-century ballet icon Rudolf Nureyev. When Rudolf Nureyev danced, “He commanded vast admiration,” wrote Clement Crisp. “He warmed the stage, the audience, his fellow dancers, the art of ballet itself, and this was his genius.” But for a man who was such a celebrated dancer, relatively few photographs and personal recollections of Nureyev and his art exist. “Most people think that there are many photographs of Rudolf Nureyev in performance,” says Roger Urban, the photographer of the new book, Life Behind the Metaphor. “But because his contracts prohibited photography, such photographs are in fact quite rare.” Life Behind the Metaphor contains the only personally authorized in-performance photos of Rudolf Nureyev during a 15-year period. Several of these ballets with Rudolf Nureyev are not recorded anywhere else.