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gramilano · 6 years

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Nureyev is an important new documentary about Rudolf Nureyev’s extraordinary life which will be shown in cinemas around the UK from 25 September.

BAFTA nominated directors Jacqui and David Morris have interviewed Nureyev’s colleagues from the dance world – Alla Osipenko, Ghislaine Thesmar, Dame Antoinette Sibley, Clement Crisp, Meredith Daneman – but sensibly don’t fill the screen with them sitting on sofas surrounded by ballet memorabilia, but illustrate their contributions with video clips and photos, enabling them to pack far more into the film’s already generous 1hr 50min running time. There is much to show because the filmmakers have unearthed 16 minutes of unseen video.

The documentary is divided into thematic blocks rather than being a simple chronology and these are interspersed with quotes, the first being from Napoleon, “Great people are meteors designed to burn so that the earth may be lighted,” and the film proceeds to show how greatly Nureyev illuminated the dance world.

There is an interesting archival recording of Yehudi Menuhin who says,

There is something in the background of any Russian, whether he be Jewish or a Tartar, which dramatizes a situation; it’s more potent, more intense. It probably comes from the fact that they have such an otherwise difficult life, as it’s always been for hundreds of years between snow and mud, and they are almost harnessed to the earth and the problems of life. It enables them when they are liberated on the stage to live life as they would have liked to have lived it, with all the abandon and the capacity for focusing, for dramatizing, for intensifying the emotion and the thought. It’s as if the sun were shining through a lens and you focus it on something and it started burning. The whole of life, the whole universe, focuses itself through the greatest Russians and they start burning, burning up the audience and burning up themselves.

These neatly connected quotes and thoughts pertinently explain Nureyev’s character, and is typical of the film’s sensitivity and understated reflections on the nature and career of this gigantic influencer. It has no sensationalism but is reflective and full of warmth.

Russell Maliphant has created scenes, sort of dance tableaux, which illustrate the mood of extracts from Nureyev’s memoirs, read by Siân Phillips, and other audio recollections and commentary – dancing in the snow, huddling among the Russian birch trees, folding sheets. Theatre composer Alex Baranowski — who wrote the score for Northern Ballet’s 1984 — has created a suggestive background for these scenes, indeed the whole film, and Lucia Lacarra and Marlon Dino are two of the dancers who appear.

The fascination with the West in the ‘50s drew young Russians to make homemade records of its evil pop music and to dance the jitterbug behind closed doors — including young ballet dancers. The film is outstanding at contextualising this and other periods of Nureyev’s life. While Russia didn’t have teenage dance moves or gigantic American fridges, it did have two powerful weapons at its disposal, the Kirov and the Bolshoi, and what better way to enhance Russian prestige around the world than by having these companies tour abroad.

The Kirov was in Paris in 1961. Alla Osipenko, one of Nureyev’s partners, says,

We were totally into the underground nightlife at the time and it was a real challenge to return unseen in the morning… Rudolf was a free spirit: “This is how I want my life to be and I will live it that way. I don’t want to live the way you order me to. I will walk my own path in life.”

Nureyev defected in Paris in 1961 on Osipenko’s 29th birthday. For this, she, and many others, paid a price.

I was not allowed to leave the country for 10 years. I knew how to block those things out, saying to myself, “It’s not vital to go to America.”

The film focuses on his relationship with Erik Bruhn — Sibley: “All my generation, us girls, were in love with Erik Bruhn.” — and that with Margot Fonteyn, who invited the young Nureyev to dance in a gala at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, on 2 November 1961. John Tooley, former director of the Royal Opera House has another slant on the story,

He wasn’t exactly invited over here – he arrived. He had written to Margot and said, I want to appear in your gala and I want to dance with you.

A Fonteyn quote:

Genius is another word for magic, and the whole point of magic is that it is inexplicable.

And ‘magic’ was the word used to describe the effect of their partnership on stage.

Fonteyn explains,

I believe that our partnership would not have been quite such a success if it hadn’t been for the difference in our ages, because what happened was that I’d go out on the stage thinking, who’s going to look at me with this young lion leaping ten feet high in the air and doing all those fantastic things. And then Rudolf had really this deep respect because I was this older, very famous, established ballerina. So it sort of charged the performance that we were both going out there inspired by the other one, and somehow it just worked.

Nureyev almost immediately rustled feathers at The Royal Ballet when he modified its production of Swan Lake after Fonteyn had agreed to do it his way. He justified his approach,

We became one body, one soul, we moved in one way, it was very complimentary, every arm movement, every head movement, there were no more cultural gaps or age difference, we were absorbed in characterisation. We became the part.

It was revolutionary and most of the audience loved it. One of the Covent Garden establishment said that Nureyev was like the Great War, wiping out a generation of male dancers on his arrival. The success of the Fonteyn/Nureyev partnership was unprecedented. Sibley says,

Footballers must have this all the time, this yelling and screaming, and it was unbelievable. It was out of all proportion to anything one had been accustomed to before.

Lucia Lacarra and Marlon Dino

A section of the documentary devoted to Nureyev’s often difficult character hears him describing his Tartar blood:

It runs faster somehow, it is always ready to boil, and yet it seems that we are more languid than the Russians, more sensuous — we are a curious mixture of tenderness and brutality.

English National Opera’s master carpenter, Ted Murphy, remembers some of the fights,

Over the years he’d have different people looking after him on stage and he used to kick them, punch them, slap them – I’ve seen all of that happening – but it was all to do about how his performance was really.

National Ballet School of Canada’s Betty Oliphant tells the story of her student who was playing a pageboy, excitedly telling her that Nureyev had spoken to him:

I said, “Oh that’s wonderful. Was he nice?” And he said, “Well, he told me to fuck off.”

Drawing by Jamie Wyeth

On love and relationships, the film documents the competitive love affair between Nureyev and Bruhn, which turned sour as Nureyev began to overshadow his former mentor. Pierre Lacotte recalls witnessing tremendous arguments between them.

As he told me one day — says Ghislaine Thesmar — you have to choose between giving your energy to love a human being or to love your art. You have to choose, you can’t have both… If you give yourself to art, nobody can take the place of art, it’s impossible. They can accompany you as long as they can stand it but then if you lose them you lose them, it’s not important.

When talk show host Michael Parkinson asked him if he had a sense of belonging anywhere, he replied simply, “Dance”.

Nureyev was open to newer forms of dance, different ways to move. He admired Martha Graham greatly, who remembered,

Rudolf came to see me backstage and just stood and looked at me and we didn’t talk about anything. Finally, it came out that he has an appetite for the new and he wants to experience everything to its fullest. He said, “I do not mind if I make a fool of myself.”

There is some previously unreleased amateur footage of him in some of the Graham works he performed. Other unseen clips of Nureyev in action show him rehearsing Nutcracker with Claude de Vulpian during his time as the Artistic Director of the Paris Opera Ballet.

The clubbing and cruising part of his life is coloured with moody archive footage of bathhouses and discos. Former New York City Ballet Principal Dancer, Heather Watts, was one of the first artists to join the fight against AIDS in the mid-1980s:

The year is ’82 and suddenly we start hearing about boys dying, just dying, and there’s real fear. The partying stopped, the fun stopped, and we started burying our friends. It was like a war.

In 1987 when Nureyev was finally allowed to return to Russia to visit his dying mother, his face had started to look slightly gaunt. He had been diagnosed with HIV in 1984.

Margot Fonteyn died in 1981. He said,

It was very lucky for us to have those glorious years. She became a very, very great friend of mine. To me she is part of my family. That all what I have – only her.

His own death came less than two years later.

Ghislaine Thesmar:

I really think this man was exceptional. I don’t mean the Rudolf of photos, making faces or scandals and all these cheapy things, I mean the real man he was… I think he defended the world of ballet. He loved ballet like a child would love a god, it was beautiful to see that.

An emotional Antoinette Sibley chokes as she says,

He was a very special person, and I feel very proud to have been part of it.

Nureyev, the film, will be launching in cinemas nationwide from 25 September 2018 with daily previews at Curzon Mayfair, London from 21 September.

Preview: Nureyev the film is a glorious celebration of an exceptional life Nureyev is an important new documentary about Rudolf Nureyev’s extraordinary life which will be shown in cinemas around the UK from 25 September.

#Antoinette Sibley #Erik Bruhn #Margot Fonteyn #Martha Graham #New York City Ballet #Royal Opera House #Rudolf Nureyev #Russell Maliphant #The Royal Ballet

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youmacaronirascal · 2 years

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Why are my trees/bushes dying?

I moved to a new house in Brandenburg, Germany last April. It had been on the market since at least September 2020 (when we found it) but plausibly longer, and the previous owners were very old (and then dead) so I don't think it'd seen much maintenance for quite a while.

Well, we moved in and tidied up and then things happened (like a baby lol) and now it's spring again and the evergreen bushes are steadily dying for no reason I can guess. There's a big birch that seems pretty healthy (lost a branch over winter, but that's normal I think) and some small trees in the back that are thriving. I've done nothing aggressive, no weed-killers at all.

Can it be fixed? What's even the problem? I didn't plant any of it so unless I recognise the species I have no idea what the plants are, which isn't helping. Thanks, all!

https://preview.redd.it/usvdjsu6emi81.jpg?width=960&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=fd0aeaf3f86c80002e2f36e73d06e205c1175401

This one's a female yew, dieback seems stable

This got drastically worse over winter

This one's getting worse too

In a bad way last year but looks stabilised. The tree behind it is doing very well, the privet is fine it's just had a vicious pruning.

submitted by /u/Doctor-Liz [link] [comments]

from Gardening, Plants, and Agriculture. https://ift.tt/9qSIWLw

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darenmbrown · 2 years

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Fundraising page set up for alleged murder victim

A grieving sister from Sunderland has launched a fundraising page to cover the cost of her brother’s funeral who was allegedly murdered on Christmas Day.

Simon Birch, known to many as ‘Birchie’, died following a suspected assault at an address on Sunderland Road in Newbottle shortly before 11.20pm on December 25, 2021.

Emergency services found the 39-year-old with a serious injury consistent with having been caused by a bladed article and he sadly died at the scene.

Go here for more Sunderland news and updates from Sunderland Live

Now his sister Victoria, 42, from Grindon, has launched a Go Fund Me page to raise £4,500 to go towards a funeral for Simon who she said was the “life and soul of the party”.

She said: “We’re just trying to raise some money to help my parents. They didn’t really think they would be planning a funeral for him, it should be the other way round.

“It’s just to take a bit of the burden off them, we’re only a small family so we’re all chipping in and trying to help.

“He was the life and soul of the party, he had a heart of gold.”

The much-loved uncle also leaves behind his parents, Ian and Jennifer Birch and his daughters 18-year-old Brogan and 13-year-old Georgie.

Victoria said the family has been left overwhelmed by the response from people who knew Simon.

She said: “We didn’t realise how many people knew him. They don’t know him as Simon, they know him as Birchy.

“We’ve had so many people say I know Birchy, he was a friend of a friend. He would leave such an impression on everyone he met, he was like a big explosion.

“His tattoo artist said he came in as a customer and left as a really good friend. He loved his tattoos and they would spend hours and hours together chewing the fat.

“We’re hearing lots of stories for the first time and it’s so lovely because these are all parts of his life.”

Paying tribute to her brother, Victoria said he would do “anything for anyone” and “lived life in the fast lane”.

She said: “Everyone who met him said he was just a really good person, he was very impressionable. He would do anything for anyone.

“He loved his motorbikes and cars, he lived life in the fast lane.

“He just lived life to the full and he should have been living it for longer.”

At the time of publishing, more than £700 had been raised with Victoria thanking all those who have donated so far.

If you would like to donate to the Go Fund Me page, you can do so here.

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#computer scientist #experimental roboticist #university of denver #assistant professor #computer sci

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elsakdalton · 2 years

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Fundraising page set up for alleged murder victim