News Clippings '75

Dance News March 1975 By Kitty Cunningham Page 3	Nureyev Views Modern Dance Rudolf Nureyev's performances at the Uris Theater made one wonder where his next steps will take him. What will the next modern pieces be and how does he see modern dance? In an interview in his dressing room just before his Uris season ended he answered some questions: Q: I would like to talk to you about modern dance. I have read in many places what other people think you ought to think. I would like to know what you really think. A: I'm rather reluctant to speak about modern dance since I don't quite know much about it. One can't really know without experiencing it, actually doing dancing. My experience has been rather small so far. Q: What is your vision of dance. You are one of the few ballet dancers who goes regularly to modern dance performances. A: Well it's a contemporary form isn't it? A contemporary language. And though it's not exactly too natural to me, I have to learn to look at the various choreographers. every style is different, as is the style of every choreographer. By doing one you don't have an answer or you don't have a formula for the next one you're going to do. The classic ballet still dominates today on the stage but one has to pay equal attention to modern dance. Q: What do you like to pay attention to? A: Its different shape and different form - the way it is structured. They can cut a long story rather short and get to the essentials. But I can't define it since I'm not exactly a choreographer, I'm not a modern choreographer. You should ask them. I'm just happy to be their instrument, whoever is willing to spend time with me. Q: Within the different styles - in learning contractions and working on the floor - is it very strange and different? A: Of course it's different. But you're worried about specific areas? (Good God, that sounded American!) Too many words- gadgety words. I read a review about Merle Park doing a classical dance. It was rather like..."dance found a place for her muscles." Well, I thought it was rather hoity-toity - a very strange expression- too gadgety. Q: The Moor's Pavane and Aureole are very different pieces. A: Very different pieces. I was taught by Jose Limon and Paul Taylor. I guess somebody thought, well, there's not enough contractions or not enough flexed feet. It doesn't look modern enough by some critic's standards. Paul Taylor, for example, explained to me he never wanted it to look like that, specifically as a modern dance. He wanted it to look like dance. As natural and as simple as possible. And that's what one tries. Q: In The Moor's Pavane what did Limon tell you to think of? For example, about weight? A: Obviously there is a gravity. Probably I've observed enough modern dance to see that, or maybe, it's a kind of inner characteristic. It's very easy to know that you have to be rather attached to the floor. Q: Do you see yourself doing a lot more modern dance? A: It all depends on the choreographer. Anybody who wants to share. It's always tailored for their bodies or their particular way of moving. They're not easily parted with that. They don't like to create star vehicles. Anyway, anybody who is willing to do a ballet, I rush they. Next October I rush to Holland to Rudi van Dantzig and try to work with him...
Newsday Friday, April 18, 1975 A Ballet By Bob Micklin	Martha Graham Center for Contemporary Dance Calling Rudolf Nureyev a "dancer with a primal body, so controlled, (who) does not permit himself to be limited," choreographer Martha Graham announced yesterday that she is preparing a new work especially for Nureyev to be premiered June 19 at Broadway's Uris Theater. The new work, titled "Lucifer," will be featured in a special program for the benefit of the Martha Graham Center for Contemporary Dance. It will have music by Egyptian composer Halim El-Dabh and costumes by fashion designer Halston. Ticket for the single-performance benefit will be priced from $50 to a sky-high top of $10,000. Although "Lucifer" had been rumored as a vehicle for both Nureyev and ballerina Margot Fonteyn, Graham said at a press conference at the Graham School in Manhattan that Fonteyn's participation was still in doubt. "She will do it if she has the time and the desire," Graham said. "I will choreograph the part on someone balletic in type." Even if Fonteyn does not dance in "Lucifer," she and Nureyev will do the "White Swan" pas de deux from "Swan Lake" at the benefit. Also on the program will be two early Graham works - "Lamentation" (1930) and "Frontier" (1935) - complete performances of "Herodiade" and "Diversion of Angels" and demonstrations of the Graham technique by members of the company... "Lucifer" will mark the first time that Nureyev, 37, and Graham, 81, have worked together, although he did practice Graham technique with her last January while he was starring with his own troupe in New York. Famous as a ballet dancer, Nureyev also has appeared in several modern works by Paul Taylor, Glen Tetley, Maurice Bejart and Rudi Van Dantzig. Asked to describe her new dance, Graham said that her Lucifer does not represent Satan, but rather the god of light. "Any great artist is a bringer of light," she said, "and Rudolf is a god of light."
New York Times April 18, 1975 By Anna Kisselgoff	Fonteyn, Nureyev to Join Martha Graham in Benefit... Speaking warmly of both Mr. Nureyev and Dame Margot, Miss Graham in effect declared the "war" between modern dance and ballet to be at an end and noted that in addition to revivals of early Graham solos on the June 19 program, there would be a performance by two ballet dancers in an excerpt from "Swan Lake," the pas de deux from Act II. Miss Graham whose own career since 1926 as a choreographer and dancer has often been seen as a rebellion against ballet and who had a publicized confrontation in 1931 with Michel Fokine, the Russian ballet choreographer, said she welcomed the openness and sensitivity of performances such as Dame Margot and Mr. Nureyev. "The war has ended," she said. "I don't think the was against ballet. The war was against the frivolity of ballet. It was the ballerinas in Paris who represented 'the spirit of champagne' - that was the thing that triggered us off." Miss Graham said she first met Mr. Nureyev when she was dancing in London with her company, in 1967. Mr. Nureyev "used to come back to my dressing room and just look at me," she said. During the Graham company's spring season last year, they were formally introduced, and they spoke of the possibility of Mr. Nureyev's and then Dame Margot's possible participation in Miss Graham's dance works. Neither dancer had been trained in the movement idiom Miss Graham virtually invented. Rejecting the idea that the two ballet dancers were no interested in modern dance merely because they might be approaching the end of their own performing careers in classical ballet, Miss Graham declared: "Maybe there are a few who are frustrated at not being able to do what they could do before. But there are a few who want to go deeper into themselves, into untapped sources, dramatically. "Others in ballet have come to me, and I have refused them because I have not trusted the motive. It take great courage to embark upon a new course." "I have enjoyed working with Rudolf Nureyev," she said. "He has an endless capacity for work. he does not permit himself to be limited. It takes courage to break the pattern the audience has made for you. "I told him we may fail. If we do, we don't want to make it a little failure, we will make it a scandal."...
Adelaide Advertiser May 28, 1975 From Chris Butler in Melbourne	Nureyev a wolf in lion's clothing ..."Dancing is part of my system, inbred. But everything natural you have to cultivate. When I am on stage I just don't find myself there by mistake. I am there by design." In his dancing he tried to combine physiculture and knowledge. "But when physical strength caves in there is some kind of wisdom. One is wise. Wisdom takes over, and stagecraft and knowledge. I hope I have cohesion, sense of balance and I hope it doesn't fail me in recognizing one or the other and merging them together on stage." ..."Sleeping Beauty", the production designed and produced by Nureyev, was heading towards the end of the first act. "This is my standard, my vision. By this you can judge me and see what kind of ingredients are put into it. You judge my standard." There was no doubt of that standard, judging by the crowded house and queues of people waiting at the box office to take first grab at any unlikely cancellations. But, getting back to the man himself, what did he think of being compared with the Russian ballet master Nijinsky? "Have you seen Nijinsky?" he asked..."What do you know about him?" "What qualities would you associate with him?"... "I'm trying to pinpoint from what point you can judge a dancer."... "I mean what he inspired, how did he move art or was he just a pimp or just showed off. From those points you must judge." ...After all that he said he would not mind being compared with Nijinsky, "a great, great man. He had real genius in him."
Times September 29, 1975 excerpts from article by John Percival	Rudolf Nureyev, guest star, performed at the Teatro de la Zarzuela during the Scottish Ballet's visit to Madrid to open the city's fourth annual dance festival featuring four European ballet companies, the Paul Taylor dance company from New York, Henryk Tomaszewski's Wroclaw mime ensemble and folk dance troupes from Cuba and Spain. ...For so diverse a prospectus there could hardly be a more apt beginning than the Scottish Ballet provided, with programmes ranging from La Sylphide to the premiere of a work by Murray Louis Moments. This is a creation for Nureyev and four men to Ravel's spring quartet. Uncompromisingly modern in its dance idiom, it avoids any specific plot but is so packed with emotional undertones that it makes a powerful impact. Wearing colourful leotards so drastically cut away that they seem scarcely more than bathing trunks with a narrow strip reaching up to the shoulders, the cast might almost be young me romping on a beach, except for the aura of authority and separation surrounding Nureyev's role. He mingles with the others, is lifted and supported by them, but conveys the sense of a special destiny. More than once he appears a latter-day Apollo disporting himself with a group of male muses. As always in Louis's choreography, the arms and hands are given much importance. Nureyev's role contains many of the tiny gestures typical of the choreographer's own solos, but moulded into a physical flux derived from the dancer's different musculature. The troubled mood that recurs in the music is reflected mainly in his role; the other men have the more sportive parts. It is the first time Louis has created a work outside his own company, and the opportunity to stand back from it more than usual during production has undoubtedly been and advantage. Together with the benefit of working with a great dancer and the inspiration of a rewarding and very suitable score, the result is a wok that grips the imagination throughout and shows off all its dancers to fine advantage...
The Times Wednesday, October 22, 1975 John Percival	Sonja Marchiolli and Rudolf Nureyev in Rudi Van Dantzig's "Blown in a gentle wind" ...Rudi Van Dantzig's new creation for the Dutch National Ballet confronts that problem (beginning by killing off your hero) by showing its protagonist's life as fragments remembered at the moment of death...One recurrent motif, both apt and effective, is of leaps arrested in mid-flight when the dancer is caught by others and held motionless or hurried away. The male trios for the man and his angels are mainly in a gently mood but never lack virility; the love duets have a beautiful flow of movement. As the central character is on stage for the ballet's who duration (27 minutes) his dancing has to be pace to go the distance. Nureyev danced the opening performances and is appearing throughout a tour of Swiss and Austrian cities; later one of the company's own leading men will take over. there are highlights of demanding solos to show off a bravura technique, and Nureyev rises to these with lithe strength, but they are set in a continuous flux of sustained movement. The expressiveness he brings to this is every bit as impressive as the more obvious virtuosity...