Reading Group Guide
A Russian peasant who became an international legend, a Cold War exile who inspired millions, an artist whose name stood for genius, sex, and excess-the magnificence of Rudolf Nureyev's life and work are known, but now Colum McCann, in his most daring novel yet, reinvents this erotically charged figure through the light he cast on those who knew him.
Taking his inspiration from the biographical facts, McCann tells the story through a chorus of voices: there is Anna Vasileva, Rudi's first ballet teacher, who rescues her protégé from the stunted life of his town; Yulia, whose sexual and artistic ambitions are thwarted by her Soviet-sanctioned marriage; and Victor, the Venezuelan hustler, who reveals the lurid underside of the gay celebrity set. Spanning four decades and many worlds, from the horrors of Stalingrad to the wild abandon of New York in the eighties, Dancer is peopled by a large cast of characters, obscure and famous: doormen and shoemakers, Margot Fonteyn and John Lennon. And at the heart of the spectacle stands the artist himself, willful, lustful, and driven by a never-tobe-met need for perfection.
In ecstatic prose, McCann evokes the distinct consciousness of the man and the glittering reflection of the myth. The result is a monumental story of love, art, and exile.
1. The novel is told from a variety of viewpoints, from close first-person testimony to diary entries, from the documentary-like lens of the opening pages to the second-person imprecations of Nureyev's time in Leningrad to the intimate third-person tales of street hustler Victor Pareci or cobbler Tom Ashworth. Why do you think the story of Rudolph Nureyev is told by so many people other than Rudolph Nureyev? Which voices feel more fully-realized to you than others, and why?
2. The objects thrown on stage following Nureyev's performance; the details of the Russian soldiers marching in the snow; Nureyev's various purchases; the gifts he brings back to his family and friends in the U.S.S.R.; the items of his life being auctioned off. What is the significance of lists in the novel?
3. What is the use and larger implications of the term "former history" at the bottom of page 75.
4. Discuss the novel's intermittent use of the second-person voice. What is implicit in its direction and command? What sort of commentary does it indirectly offer on the ideas of Celebrity or History?
5. The physicality of dance is often scrupulously, even tenaciously rendered throughout the novel. In addition, great care is given to the wording invoked in describing dance, from precise craft and medical terminology to the sound of turning joints or the rendered power of eye-contact. On page 91, a narrator turns intentionally vague when she says that Nureyev "was using something beyond his body." What does such a phrase say about Nureyev as an artist? What does it say about Yulia as an observer?
6. For a book so concerned with the movement of history and personal history, there are also intense moments of stop-time. Think of Rudi pausing in mid-air. Think of the phrase uttered on the top of page 149: "It's our function in life to make moments durable." Is this preservation of beauty, this preservation of the immediate the purpose of Art? What exactly is preserved by creating beauty, and furthermore, is history then a record of such preservation?
7. "Poverty lust sickness envy and hope, he said again. It has survived them all." This is said of the last remaining piece of family china, a saucer dish, given to Yulia by her dying father. How is the saucer a symbol for other things in Dancer?
8. The only portions of the novel narrated by Nureyev are told in diary-like entries, and while the entries can be fairly lengthy and/or specific, none of them express how the man thinks or feels. Why do you think we are held at a remove from Nureyev, both in his own portion and by dint through all the other portions of the novel?
9. Explain the role of Victor Pareci's section in the larger scheme of the book; also, in Nureyev's life. Think of the comparison made between Victor and Rudi on page 235, the two men being the edge of the coin.
10. How is violence a form of affection in the novel? Are the motivations to harm the same as those to love?
11. Dancer is a novel of communication. The communication of art, performance, feeling. Likewise, it's a novel of communication communicated to the reader by voices. What does one learn from Nureyev's life by looking at it through the lens of the communicated? How does it alter or expand one's notion of novelwriting. What does it say about the art of storytelling? Think back to the story of the maimed soldier told in the middle of page 135, or the brief metaphor of the chess game used in the middle of page 327.
