Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Divine Monster
To be touched by greatness is one thing, to be consumed by greatness is entirely another. "Dancer" would have us believe Rudolf Nureyev was consumed by greatness, and I have no reason to believe otherwise. This fictionalized biography follows Nureyev through most of his life. It gives us the discipline, the passion - the obsessions - necessary to the fame Nureyev achieved. It also gives us the selfishness that comes with obsession, and a taste of the fabulous rewards that can so easily poison genius. But ultimately, nothing was more important than the dance, and this is both the sadness and the splendor of the story. The stage is Nureyev's redemption, but it is also his curse. No matter how much love, joy, or suffering, no matter what riches, life is finally for the stage, and all the rest - grist for the mill. Colum McCann is a fine writer. He writes with formality, but also with a rush of experimentation, giving us the voices and visions, real and imagined, that guided Nureyev's life. "Dancer" is not only a good read, it's also a meditation of one artist's creative process, and therefore an insight into the creative process per se. I reccommend this book whether you are a ballet fan or not - it's an adventure, a romance, and a study, and well worth the time.
Rating: - A whirlwind of memories, sensations, and dance.
"Dancer" is one of the most engaging novels that I have ever had the pleasure to read. Kaleidoscopic in nature, various events of Rudolph Nureyev's life are told by family members, teachers, dance partners, and friends, and this constantly changing perspective helps keep the novel's momentum. "Dancer" begins in grim postwar Russia with the arrival of wounded soldiers, and young Rudolph wonders if his father will be arriving with them. He dances for the soldiers in the makeshift hospital, and eventually studies dance with an exiled former ballerina. Later he goes to Leningrad to continue his training, living with Yulia, a repressed translator trapped in an abusive, dead-end marriage. Rudolph is blossoming into adulthood, arrogant and mysterious, and it becomes clear to all that he will become a legend of ballet. To the shock of family and friends, he defects from the Soviet Union even as his fame grows, but secret agents continue to hound him, waiting for him to trip up so he can be sent to the hard labour camps or even sentenced to death. The rest of the novel chronicles his stormy love affair with Erik Bruhn, his journeys between London and Paris, his later friendship with gay hustler Victor Pareci and the downward spiral of drugs, unsafe sex, dance injuries, a risky return to the Soviet Union, and hints of his losing battle against AIDS. The numerous narrators include Odile, Nureyev's French maid, Margot Fonteyn, Victor Pareci, a London shoemaker, Rudolph's sister Tamara, Yulia, and others. Somehow McCann manages to keep the individual threads of the story separate, yet interwoven enough to form a shimmering tapestry of passion, betrayal, dedication, and above all the dance itself, spanning four decades of Nureyev's life and his final return to visit his ailing mother and friends. Touching and vibrant, "Dancer" is a whirlwind ride into the mind and body of an exiled ballet genius who will never be forgotten.
Rating: - "A sort of hunger turned human."
Dancer is an extraordinary novel, affecting me more profoundly than any other novel I have read in a long time. Vivid and hard-edged, rather than lyrical and beautiful, it fuses fact and fiction seamlessly, bringing to life ballet star Rudolf Nureyev and the many secret worlds he inhabited. From his first public performance, when, at the age of five he performed an exuberant dance in a hospital ward for Russian soldiers wounded in World War II, he was considered more athletic than subtle, and as he grew older, his legs were regarded as the source of "more violence than grace." Nureyev's "wild and feral" style of dance meshes perfectly with McCann's prose. Paralleling the athleticism and drive of Nureyev, McCann's writing is bold and straightforward, characterized by short, powerful, descriptive sentences, often in a simple subject-verb-object pattern. Avoiding all frills and sentimentality, McCann favors strength over lyricism, and power over prettiness. Through the first person observations of almost two dozen characters who touched Nureyev's life in some way, McCann shines light on Nureyev's personality and his development as a dancer. His family, teachers, lovers, and even a schoolboy bully, a stilt-walker, and the captain of an airplane, who filed an "incident report" about his atrocious behavior aboard a plane, all comment on his actions and the choices he makes, personally and professionally, as his career soars. The deprivation and sadness experienced by most of these sensitive observers in their own lives contrasts vividly with the excesses and hedonism of Nureyev's adult life and illuminate, without need for authorial comment, his arrogance and boorishness. At the same time, however, these multiple viewpoints also humanize Nureyev in many ways by showing the extent to which these other characters are connected by love to others and to their history, while Nureyev becomes a "living myth...cared for and coddled and protected by the mythmakers." Filled with intriguing characters, ranging from simple Russian peasants to Andy Warhol, Tennessee Williams, John Lennon, Truman Capote, Mick Jagger, Jimi Hendrix, and the stars of ballet, the novel is a monument to the power of the creative spirit and a testament to the dangers inherent in a life from which all other controls have been removed. Rudi always "tore [a] role open...by the manner in which he presented himself, a sort of hunger turned human." McCann brings this voracious human to life. Nureyev leaps off these pages in a huge and stunning grand jete. Mary Whipple
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