FORTRESS NUREYEV

Dozens of dancers, crew members and company alumni are jammed in the wings of the O’Keefe Centre waiting to rehearse the grandiose processional finale of National Ballet of Canada’s 35th Anniversary Gala. But Rudolf Nureyev is on stage and in no mood to leave.

While working through partnering logistics in the Bejart/Mahler duet “Songs of a Wayfarer” with company principal Frank Augustyn, he had demanded more sound from the stage loudspeakers and complained about the lighting.

Now Nureyev suspends the dancing altogether to reset cues and colors. He wants the stage brighter, bluer and peppers his instructions with enough obscenities to make the stage very blue indeed.

“Par for the course,” says a crew member backstage almost affectionately, “catty sarcasm and swearing.” A technician, in another conversation, concurs. “He’s enjoying a little joke out there. He hasn’t changed.”

Twenty minutes later, the finale rehearsal at last begins and Nureyev heads for his dressing room. En route, he passes and pauses to hear a comment from a Los Angeles dance writer on assignment for an article timed to the “Nureyev and Friends” performance in Shrine Auditorium on Saturday.

“I was interested in the way you took charge of the rehearsal to make the ballet look the way you remembered it,” the writer began. “I do hope we will have a chance to talk more before you leave Toronto.”

This is a major understatement. Although the writer flew to Canada with the promise of an hourlong interview, Nureyev had spoken with him for only 20 minutes, just before the run-through. And now Nureyev bridles at the request for more interview time, suddenly advancing on the writer and jabbing his finger in the narrowing space between the two.

“I want you to know your questions upset me so much I was unable to dance (at the rehearsal),” he says, his voice rising. “By dredging up all that crap, you force me to talk about it at the next interview, and the one after that.” He then angrily denounces what he calls the writer’s “Gestapo tactics” at the interview.

Wedged between Nureyev, a line of waiting corps members and the wall, the writer can’t retreat, much less escape. He apologizes “profoundly” for upsetting Nureyev, but declares, very deliberately, that “both personally and racially I cannot identify with your term ‘Gestapo tactics.’ ”

Nureyev looks startled and changes his Nazi insult to the generic “accusatory interrogation.” But the writer won’t accept that label, either. Insisting he had behaved with respect toward a man he recognizes as one of the greatest dancers of the 20th Century, he mentions that he has a number of less provocative but still pertinent questions that he hopes Nureyev will find time to answer.

At this moment, a National Ballet crew member comes to fetch Nureyev for the end-of-finale tableau, and it isn’t clear whether Nureyev’s loud “Nyet!” is directed at him or the writer.

In any case, it represents his last word on the subject. The next morning a publicist claiming to speak for Nureyev orders the writer not to talk to the dancer at a photo session that day. (“If you ask him any questions, he will walk out.”)

During the shoot, Nureyev himself treats the writer with silent disdain. And though requests to complete the interview are subsequently made through Nureyev’s management and Ambassador Foundation, the Los Angeles sponsor of “Nureyev and Friends,” nothing happens.

Back in his hotel, the writer plays back the Nureyev tape, secretly a little flattered by the notion that he’d intimidated the monstre sacre of world dance, the superstar who has been almost as well known for his explosive temperament as his virtuosic dancing in the quarter century since he defected from the Kirov Ballet.

Unfortunately, the fantasy of being recognized as the Rambo of dance journalism immediately disintegrates: The cassette proves the writer a solicitous pushover, awed by Nureyev to the point where he almost apologizes for the toughest questions.

Through those questions, the writer intended to discover Nureyev’s response to the incredible storm of abuse he endured in the last few years--the terrible rumors about his health, the headline-making feuds with choreographers, the accusations by critics and by dancers in his own Paris Opera Ballet that, at 49, he had nothing left to offer but was obsessed with keeping himself in the spotlight.

“Embattled Nureyev” was the first working title of the story, but events in Toronto soon changed it to “Rudi Dearest.”

Just before the interview, for instance, a visiting photographer gave Nureyev a set of prints taken last July of his Paris Opera Ballet performances in New York. Nureyev looked at them blankly, as if he didn’t recognize himself or his company members, so the photographer nervously added, “These are when you danced with Misha at the Met.”

At this offhand mention of Mikhail Baryshnikov, Nureyev erupted in cold fury. “There is no ‘Misha’ in these pictures,” he replied vehemently, nearly hissing the nickname and leafing distastefully through the photos as if he could scarcely bear to touch them.

The writer watched Nureyev’s behavior in amazement and wondered whether such outbursts were truly irrational or performances calculated to manipulate people. Only those close to him would know for sure.

In the interview itself, Nureyev keeps insisting that controversy doesn’t bother him: “It’s a professional hazard. If you don’t bring controversy, envy, it means you don’t represent anything important.” However, he grows increasingly volatile as news stories and published quotes by rival dancers or choreographers are recycled for his reaction.

“Why are you so happy to bring all that crap up again?,” he demands sternly at one point. “Why should I comment, since it’s all nonsense?

“I’m very happy. If you do your thing, believe in what you do, and if you do it in a talented way, everything is wiped away.

“You should really admire, rejoice, that somebody at 49 has good health, looks like a young boy, dances well and enjoys doing it. The rest doesn’t matter.”

Perhaps, but this defiant pride represents only one part of the picture. In company class, before the rehearsal, another Nureyev had emerged, one who frequently made jokes about his loss of prowess, restricted flexibility and extra weight.

For instance, after one step combination went badly, he suddenly began caricaturing a fat man--puffing out his cheeks, sinking into a wide stance and shaping the air around his hips as if they were enormous.

This unexpectedly Chaplinesque Nureyev surely knew that he didn’t look like a young boy, that he’d lost the definition in his arms and legs, that he’d thickened in the hips, thighs and bottom, that his ability to bend and jump had eroded. And it was this unassuming, self-aware Nureyev who helped Frank Augustyn through a private rehearsal of “Songs of a Wayfarer” with unflagging patience and humor.

Repeating minute problems of timing or spacing, he sometimes wickedly parodied Bejart’s movement. For example, a repeated kiss-goodby-to-the-light passage--the Nureyev role’s most poignant motif--suddenly resembled a delirious curtain call, with the dancer blowing kisses to imaginary fans in the balcony.

Like his now-legendary partnership with Miss Piggy in a televised “White Swine” pas de deux, this impromptu irreverence freed Nureyev from his imprisoning glamour, giving the spectator a glimpse of a lively, approachable man who just happens to be a great star.

Unfortunately, the Nureyev who groans at his own rigidity or impishly grabs a colleague’s buttocks or plays the simpleton to ease the tension of work has never been available for interviews. Dance journalists are inevitably stuck with the public Nureyev, the notorious saucy Tartar who, between flashes of temperament, utters deadly, myopic Dance-as-Life speeches, “My Way” a la Russe:

“Life is about oneself and it is you that has to satisfy yourself, this inner animal or whatever it is inside which is hungry, which wants things, having, doing, experiencing. The rest of the world doesn’t exist.”

Fast-forwarding the tape through several other defensive arias, the writer reaches the “crap”--the questions about people and incidents in Nureyev’s career that disturbed him so much. No way now of placing his answers in context, but they might be newsworthy even in isolation:

Nureyev on Maurice Bejart, who recently called for Nureyev’s resignation from the Paris Opera Ballet directorship :

“I guess there’s a very big percentage of jealousy or something. Mr. Bejart probably wanted to be at the Paris Opera and never managed to get in and Roland Petit came and was fired and so on. They probably feel only a French person should be at the Paris Opera. Anyway, if a country, a government, thinks I shouldn’t be there, they could substitute (someone for) me very easily. But they didn’t do it.”

On the now-defunct AIDS rumors about Nureyev--rumors that reportedly prompted a Chicago sponsor to cancel a scheduled engagement by the Paris Opera Ballet two years ago:

“No, no, that’s not true. (The tour cancellation) was just an unhealthy financial thing.” The writer seeks a clarification. “Don’t harp,” Nureyev snaps. “Obviously it’s wrong, so why do we have to chew it? I’m alive, I’m very well, I don’t have any AIDS. It doesn’t bother me.

“Look at people now. They say this has AIDS, that has AIDS--now it’s in fashion to have AIDS.” He laughs loudly, mirthlessly. “I don’t care. If no dogs are barking at you, it means that you aren’t worth anything.”

Nureyev on the Soviet government’s unprecedented invitation to Mikhail Baryshnikov and Natalia Makarova to dance at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow:

“In a way I’m very surprised that the Western press is rather negative and sourpussed about it all. I thought that for a change a man of quality comes to the Kremlin and tries to move a big, sleepy country into some kind of shape, but the West wasn’t quick enough to recognize the quality of this.

“One can doubt as much as one wants how good the intentions are, but still the offer itself is very remarkable. Anyway, it is a beginning.”

Does he know why he wasn’t invited?

“Obviously the whole thing is about playing footsie with the United States rather than with the European countries, and Mr. Baryshnikov is a citizen of the United States, which I’m not.” (Nureyev became a citizen of Austria in 1982.)

Finally, the deepest, most conspicuous issue:

Nureyev on dancing at 49 and his unwillingness to retire:

“Obviously, if I continue dancing I find that my performance is valid. For curious persons in the audience or a dancer, there are things to be learned. If I didn’t think that, I wouldn’t be on the stage.

“It’s exciting. I danced last night in Paris in ‘Cinderella,’ the night before in ‘Don Quixote’ at La Scala and then here. And I am happy doing that. I enjoy exciting the public.

“There are pluses all over the place now. I’m less tormented than I used to be. Any step I used to do, it was a traumatic experience--that was at age 23, 24. I was always at war with myself.

“What happened was the tours in America (in the 1970s), when I started to dance seven, eight times a week for three or four months. And that’s when I calmed down my nerves and I lost a good proportion of stage fright, conquered myself and enjoyed dancing.

“I prize those tours very much and now going through those cities (with his “And Friends” group) is not nostalgia, not wistfulness, but I have great pleasure touring again to those same places.”

He dryly observes that “probably you know that reviews about my dancing are not all favorable” and blames critics for trying to force him to retire:

“For the last 30 years they have tried to pull me off stage. I remember reviews when I was only 25 that said that I already should retire--the questions about retirement began from my second year in the West.

“Should I succumb to this opinion, this manufactured opinion, if you wish?” He doesn’t wait for an answer. “No, I ignore it, close the door and just do my thing.” A moment later, while Nureyev is repeating that he doesn’t care what people say about him, a crew member fetches him for the “Songs of a Wayfarer” stage rehearsal and the interview is over.

Midway through the 20 minutes, Nureyev had talked of “using the life experience in your dancing. Doing Albrecht at the age of 21 or at 30, 40 and now at 49 is a different thing. He can’t be as thoughtless as he was at 21.” He proves his point in his performance at the National Ballet of Canada 35th Anniversary gala.

When Bejart choreographed “Songs of a Wayfarer,” 16 years ago, the ballet represented a tantalizing enigma: a nonliteral dance-drama that some observers thought masked a statement about the estrangement of the homosexual in our society, but everyone agreed showed an innocent, shining youth (Nureyev) submitting to an implacable force or fate (Paolo Bortoluzzi).

No longer. In Toronto, the ballet is an autumnal reminiscence, as if Nureyev’s character is reliving a turning point in his early life--the moment when his future turned dark.

His dancing at the gala isn’t notably Bejartian in style. All the intensity in the performance is facial and occasionally gestural. No emotion comes from the body and there is no sensuality or stretch.

Even so, his technique is unreliable: Balances are hard won, air turns chancy, landings heavy--all the physical effort extremely evident. And there are lapses in stamina, movements flung out without much energy or even control.

But since “Songs of a Wayfarer” depicts an ordeal, all the labor and even struggle required for Nureyev to dance it merely adds to its expressive power. Moreover, in the last scene--as he is pulled upstage by Augustyn--his projection of pain is unforgettable.

The final, horrified glance toward the audience tells it all: For this man, leaving the spotlight is the same thing as death. What Bejart created in 1971 as symbolism now plays like psychodrama.

There is an enthusiastic ovation: Feeding time for the inner animal. In the finale, Nureyev (wearing a double-breasted tuxedo) joins the National’s principals center stage and founder Celia Franca applauds him, as if the whole event is a tribute to this one man.

Nureyev is smiling cryptically. At 49, dancing well just isn’t the issue. Dancing at all is the best revenge.