home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search
- Path: sparky!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!not-for-mail
- From: trh@jack.sns.com (Al Trh)
- Newsgroups: soc.culture.turkish
- Subject: On Abdurrahman Nuri (A legend's private life...), from SJMercury News
- Date: 21 Jan 1993 07:39:29 -0600
- Organization: UTexas Mail-to-News Gateway
- Lines: 24
- Sender: daemon@cs.utexas.edu
- Message-ID: <9301211339.AA22838@deepthought.cs.utexas.edu>
- Reply-To: Turkish Cultural Program List <TRKNWS-L%USCVM.BitNet@pucc.PRINCETON.EDU>
- NNTP-Posting-Host: cs.utexas.edu
-
- A legend's private life, private death
- Paul Hertelendy
- Music Writer
- San Jose Mercury News, January 20, 1993
-
- RUDOLF Nureyev left a grand legacy as well as soaring
- memories for his fans when he died Jan. 6 at age 54. His
- immense artistry was enmeshed with a great defensiveness to
- the end. By keeping silent about his illness, he missed many
- chances to win support for people with AIDS.
- Although Nureyev's public knew very little about his
- personal life, many dancers were aware throughout his three
- decades in the West hat he was gay.
- "I wasn't aware that he tried to keep it (his sexual ori-
- entation) secret," said San Francisco Ballet Artistic
- Director Helgi Tomasson.
- Before defecting from Leningrad's Kirov Ballet in 1961,
- however, Nureyev had to hide his true self. In the former
- USSR, homosexuality was against the law.
- Nureyev was an outsider from the start at the Kirov, an
- ethnic Tartar hailing from a Turkish-Muslim area near the
- Urals. According to one report his name had originally been
- Abdurrahman Nuri, but was Russianized to Rudolf Nureyev by
- the time he got to the Kirov school.
-