SALON

Saturday, Jan 18, 2003 12:28 AM UTC

“Dancer” by Colum McCann

A novel that captures the wild, glorious life of Rudolf Nureyev -- beautiful, arrogant and brilliant -- and the tragic country he abandoned.

By

Topics: Books,

Early in Colum McCann’s novel “Dancer” you realize that this fictionalized account of the life of ballet genius Rudolf Nureyev isn’t really about Rudolf Nureyev. The first half, especially the unblinking initial 10 pages, a hypnotic rush of brutal war imagery and an unfurling of the devastation that a winter campaign visits on men, is about Russia. The last half of the book, after the young peasant dancer becomes a beloved, controversial icon, revels in the strange glow of celebrity. Obviously, the contrast between the two could not be more stark. The effect is similar to watching Nureyev explode from the stage to the air: an unearthly transformation, an angry spectacle, an overwhelming charge.

It’s all part of McCann’s technique: He starts wide and slowly closes in on Nureyev, swirling around and around him like the whirl of sand that produces a genie. When the dust settles, there should stand the beautiful, arrogant dancer, hands on hips, jaw clenched, leg muscles tight — or so we hope. Certainly, McCann briefly summons up Nureyev, and right down to the startling size of his you-know-what, but Nureyev, whoever he is, disappears just when McCann gets close. At times, this can be frustrating; by the end of “Dancer,” McCann proves his method to be entirely appropriate for his elusive subject.

The novel begins with the dancer as a poor rebellious child. McCann depicts the gray, claustrophobic, war-torn despair that Nureyev will eventually leave behind: “The local guards stood weary against the pillars under red metal signs for rural electrification that swung in the breeze — Our Great Leader Is Bringing Electricity to You! — and a smell penetrated the air, foreshadowing the soldiers, sweat and rot, and each winter afternoon a 6-year-old boy, hungry and narrow and keen, sat on a cliff above the river, looking down at the trains, wondering when his own father would be coming home and whether he would be broken just like the ones they were lifting from beneath the steam and the bugles.”

McCann’s attention to Russia eventually makes Nureyev’s departure, and his glamorous life afterward, all the more stunning. Very soon after his father returns from the war, the boy begins taking dance lessons in secret, a surprising betrayal to his poverty-stricken family. We don’t see inside the young dancer’s mind, but at the same time we know that this is Nureyev — head held impossibly high, walking proudly, his back to the world — brave enough to believe that he owes a greater duty to his gifts than to his homeland or even to his family.

A convincing rendering of a historical figure, and a notorious one, is a risky task; McCann’s solution is to shift perspectives among various people in Nureyev’s life, from his first ballet instructor to his resentful sister to Margot Fonteyn to his British shoemaker. Some might be disappointed that McCann only attempts Nureyev’s point of view once, and in rigid, diary form. And it does feel somewhat slapdash compared to the fiery, flourishing passages that McCann devotes to minor characters. The result, however, is remarkable: What McCann imagines so beautifully is the way a hero walks through life somewhat differently from the rest of us, the mere breeze of his passing setting off a thousand ripples of change, both good and bad.

Still, you can’t help but wonder what, say, a long passage about Nureyev’s close friend Victor Pareci’s insane, drug-addled social life, for all its fun and romp and speed, really adds to the novel. It’s 30-some pages of “and after checking the baths thoroughly Victor still finds no sign, so he steps out in the street, looks right and left, even jogs to the corner, but the avenue is curiously quiet and sinister, not a soul breaking its shadows, dangerous times, there have been beatings of gay men, but you live your life only as long as it lives you, so Victor starts to walk,” and so on.

Eventually, Pareci disintegrates from AIDS, not an altogether surprising end to the same sort of promiscuous life that Nureyev enjoyed. Nureyev lives longer (he too died of AIDS in 1993, but McCann doesn’t write about that), dances until he’s 50. People decay around the brilliance of the dancer; he is hurt but he goes on just as he had as a child. How? Why? “Dancer” is full of simple answers, yet McCann is wise enough to allow a sense of mystery to shroud them.

Ultimately, McCann’s decision to hold Nureyev at arm’s length captures something more interesting than a psychoanalytical probing might have revealed. When someone is as famous, as beautiful, as breathtakingly talented, as infuriatingly self-absorbed — and brings people so much pleasure — as Nureyev, those around him want more than he can possibly give, because he seems to be more than just a man. Rather than serving up his own version of Nureyev’s soul, McCann prefers to conjure awe, and the way the human heart breaks for loving something it wants but cannot possess. Nureyev still seems more than human to me, a feeling of wonder best celebrated, and left unchallenged.

Our next pick: The author of “Clockers” tells the story of a guilty white guy whose good deeds yield dire results

Suzy Hansen, a former editor at Salon, is an editor at the New York Observer. More Suzy Hansen.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments

 0 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: Chekhov's story mirrors Russia's own

Recommendations