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Julie Kavanagh trained as a dancer at the Royal Ballet School, and is the author of Secret Muses: The Life of Frederick Ashton . She has worked as ballet critic of The Spectator ; Arts Editor of Harpers & Queen ; and London Editor of Vanity Fair and The New Yorker . She is married to the ex-Royal Ballet dancer, now dance film maker, Ross MacGibbon, and has two sons. Born on a train in Stalin's Russia, Rudolf Nureyev was ballet's first pop icon. No other dancer of our time has generated the same excitement. Nureyev's achievements and conquests became legendary: he rose out of poverty to become the Kirov's thrilling maverick star; slept with his beloved mentor's wife; defected to the West in l961; sparked Rudimania across the globe; gave his rabid sexuality full reign; established the most rhapsodic partnership in dance history with the middle-aged Margot Fonteyn; reinvented male technique; gatecrashed modern dance; moulded new stars; and staged Russia's unknown ballet masterpieces in the West. Zusammenfassung Born on a train in Stalin’s Russia, Rudolf Nureyev was ballet’s first pop icon. No other dancer of our time has generated the same excitement – both on and off stage. Nureyev’s achievements and conquests became legendary: he rose out of Tatar peasant poverty to become the Kirov’s thrilling maverick star; slept with his beloved mentor’s wife; defected to the West in l961; sparked Rudimania across the globe; gave his rabid sexuality full reign; established the most rhapsodic partnership in dance history with the middle-aged Margot Fonteyn; reinvented male technique; gatecrashed modern dance; moulded new stars; and staged Russia’s unknown ballet masterpieces in the West. Julie Kavanagh’s uncompromising and magnificent biography, ten years in the making, is a brilliant tribute to a superstar the world can never forget. ...
