The Real Nureyev is an intensely personal, under-the-skin depiction of ballet’s greatest hero. No-one has written about Rudolf Nureyev quite like this before.
From the moment that the London Coliseum’s stage manager Carolyn Soutar had her first traumatic encounter with Rudolf Nureyev, she fell under his spell. For the next six years, their relationship (which at any moment could have volcanically self-destructed) – instead grew, deepened and intensified to become a long-standing friendship. “Among his millions of hangers-on and admirers and dancing partners”, she writes, “all of whom were victims of the myth and magic that was Nureyev – I was the only woman who ever worked with him in any way consistently. I was his stage manager, his confidante, a work-mate, a woman he could neither attract – it wasn’t allowed in my job – nor faze, though he certainly tried.”
THE REAL NUREYEV focuses on the last, intensely creative six-year period in the dancer’s life; when he was still at the peak of his powers, yet just a few years away from an untimely death. It draws upon both Carolyn’s own experiences and – uniquely and exclusively – those of Robert Tracy, Rudolf’s lover for the last sixteen years of his life. Robert has never before spoken of his relationship with Nureyev.
THE REAL NUREYEV is a sometimes funny, sometimes shocking, yet always deeply human and intimate insider story of what the man himself was really about. It combines, uniquely, first-person accounts and reminiscences of the two aspects of his life which have been veiled from public view – Nureyev the man/lover, and Nureyev the professional/worker. It is the most accurate book yet published about the real person behind the icon.
