Dancer - Hardcover

McCann, Colum

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1897580290 ISBN 13: 9781897580295

Publisher: W&N, 2003

Synopsis

This novel opens with a scene of war which is destined to become a classic: trudging back from the front through a ravaged and icy wasteland, their horses dying around them, their own hunger rendering them almost savage, the Russian soldiers are exhausted as they reach the city of Ufa, desperate for food and shelter. They find both, and then music and dance. And there, spinning unafraid among them, dancing for the soldiers and anyone else who¿ll watch him, is one small pale boy, Rudolf. This is Colum McCann¿s dancer. Rudolf, a prodigy at six years old, became the greatest dancer of the century, redefined dance, rewrote his own life, and died of AIDS before anyone knew he had it. This is an extraordinary life transformed into extraordinary fiction by one of the most acclaimed writers of his generation. One kind of masculine grace is perfectly matched to another in Colum McCann¿s beautiful and daring novel.

About this title

Review

Dancer, like Colum McCann's previous novels This Side of Brightness and Songdogs, is an elegant weave of historical fact and fictional imagining. Here his central character is the late, great, Rudolf Nureyev--the Soviet dancer who defected to the West at the height of the Cold War, partnered Margot Fonteyn and became ballet's first international male superstar. The "real" Nureyev remains an enigmatic, even iconic figure--as infamous for his petulance, lavish lifestyle, voracious sexual appetite and tragic AIDS-related death as for his dancing. McCann wisely eschews a straightforward account of Rudolf's outrageous life. His sympathetic portrait of the priapic star, which seems oddly weak on dance itself but certainly has scenes to rival The Satyricon, is ingeniously discursive. Nureyev is often more omnipresent than actually present--his story related through a serious of diary entries, reports and different narrative perspectives and voices, including the dancer's own. (On occasions, he even briefly drops from view entirely and the travails of his family, friends and his mentors, the Vasilevas, come to the fore.)

Divided into four loosely chronological sections, the novel spans the length of Nureyev's dancing career, opening in Stalin's war-ravaged Russia, where the young Rudolf earned sugar lumps for entertaining wounded soldiers, and closing with his last sickly, performance and a final, fleeting, visit home. Exile and displacement are really the chief themes of the book and McCann's Nureyev is a man scarred and agitated by the decision to abandon his homeland. "I dance", he notes at one point, "so much--too much--in order not to think of home". McCann seems to imply, however, that it is his disapproving father, who never saw him dance, who fuelled his relentless ambition. Forays into cod-Freudian psychoanalysis aside, this gripping reinvention of Nureyev, rich in period detail and characterisation, is well conceived, marvellously wrought and eminently readable. --Travis Elborough

Review

A remarkable novel loosely based on the life of world famous dancer Rudolf Nureyev by the author of This Side of Brightness. Rudik, as the boy is called, appears at the beginning aged six, dancing for weary Russian troops trudging back from the front through a wasteland of ice and snow to the city of Ufa. We follow his life with his parents and his problems with the father who wanted him to become a military commissar. When he slunk off to watch ballet, his father beat him. This tale of the boy who became the greatest dancer in the world is made into fascinating fiction by a master craftsman. --Rallyscene

Edition details

• Publisher: W&N
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 1897580290
• ISBN 13: 9781897580295
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 352