2-991-323 - Heritage Imagined/Heritage Images

AI IMAGE - Portrait of a young Rudolf Nureyev, 1960s, (2023). Russian ballet dancer and choreographer (1938-1993). Nureyev, regarded by some as the greatest male ballet dancer of his generation, was born on a Trans-Siberian train near Irkutsk, Siberia, Soviet Union, to a Tatar family. 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. He defected from the Soviet Union to the West in 1961, despite KGB efforts to stop him. The first defection of a Soviet artist during the Cold War, it created an international sensation. Nureyev danced with The Royal Ballet in London and from 1983 to 1989 served as director and chief choreographer of the Paris Opera Ballet. He produced his own interpretations of numerous classical works, including Swan Lake, Giselle and La Bayadère.