Rudolf Khametovich Nureyev [ a ] 17 March β 6 January was a Soviet-born ballet dancer and choreographer. Nureyev is widely regarded as the preeminent male ballet dancer of his generation as well as one of the greatest ballet dancers of all time.
He began his early career with the company that in the Soviet era was called the Kirov Ballet now called by its original name, the Mariinsky Ballet in Leningrad. Nureyev was also a choreographer serving as the chief choreographer of the Paris Opera Ballet. Nureyev was born on a Trans-Siberian train near Irkutsk, Siberia, while his mother Farida was travelling to Vladivostok , where his father Khamet, a Red Army political commissar, was stationed.
We are Muslims. Father was born in a small village near Ufa , the capital of the Republic of Bashkiria. Thus, on both sides our relatives are Tatars and Bashkirs. I cannot define exactly what it means to me to be a Tatar, and not a Russian, but I feel this difference in myself. Our Tatar blood flows somehow faster and is always ready to boil". When his mother took Nureyev and his sisters into a performance of the ballet Song of the Cranes , he fell in love with dance. On a tour stop in Moscow with a local ballet company, Nureyev auditioned for the Bolshoi ballet company and was accepted.
However, he felt that the Mariinsky Ballet school was the best, so he left the local touring company and bought a ticket to Leningrad. Owing to the disruption of Soviet cultural life caused by World War II, Nureyev was unable to enroll in a major ballet school until , aged 17, when he was accepted by the Vaganova Academy of Russian Ballet of Leningrad, the associate school of the Mariinsky Ballet.
The ballet master Alexander Ivanovich Pushkin took an interest in him professionally and allowed Nureyev to live with him and his wife. Upon his graduation in , Nureyev joined the Kirov Ballet now Mariinsky.
