to watch tonight, Wenesday, PBS at 9 pm. DO NOT MISS IT! Under any circumstances! This is the greatest dancer EVER. Plain and simply. Unarguably. In the world. EVER.
If you wish to do some advance reading, everyone but everyone on the web is talking:
Apollinaire in Newsday
James Wolcott from Vanity Fair (scroll down to last couple paragraphs; he also quotes extensively New York Sun’s Joel Lobenthal on some important things the production left out)
journalist and author Tobi Tobias
the inscrutably angry LA Times’s Lewis Segal (what in the ballet world has made that man so mad? By the way, are people just ignorning him these days? Am I the only idiot letting him get to me?)
My fellow blogger Art (through whom I found the blasted Segal article that nearly made me cry — thanks a lot, Art 😉 )
Ballet Talk talkers (focusing mostly on Nureyev’s gorgeous, cat-like demi-pointe that Segal has such issues with)
and I’m sure many many others who escaped my limited web-surfing attention span :S
Please please watch the program. No matter how deficient the documentary may be, this man’s life was so uber fascinating and his dancing so sublime you’re bound to be completely enthralled, there’s simply no way around it! This film covers his early years before he became hugely famous in the West — so, while he was in the Kirov Ballet up through his decision to defect. So basically, lots of footage of Russia 😀
C’mon, he was the original Pasha 🙂 I know, I know, I’ve offended everyone and their dog with that … I simply mean of course that for people who have fallen in love with dance through SYTYCD, there’s a whole lot more where that came from 🙂
Okay?! Wednesday night 9 p.m. PBS. Discussion to follow!
Oooo….thanks for the reminder! It’s on out here too.
Oh good, Melinda, I’m glad! (Sometimes PBS doesn’t have the same broadcast everywhere).
Documentary: so-so.
Nureyev: brilliant.
Lewis: sheesh.
Kavanaugh: Hmm.
Not sure I want to read her book now.
I agree with everything you said, e2c! I’m going to try to post on the documentary later today but generally thought the first part was too slow, then picked up in the second (largely due to the political situation it covered though). I want to read the Kavanagh mainly because I’m just so curious and want to read everything about him 🙂 Also, I’m not sure how much of that Lewis Segal article was him and how much was actually her…
I was *really* put off by the tone of much of Segal’s piece – and the sheer meanness of some of the quotes he used.
… or maybe it was just the way Segal used the quotes in question….
Yeah I was surprised that you got angry at the LA Times article and Lewis Segal – it definitely seemed like all the “juicy” (note the quotes) stuff was Julie Kavanagh being Julie Kavanagh. Some folks have taken similar exception to her biography of Frederick Ashton, but perhaps thats why the biography makes at least an interesting read…