Dancer

by Colum McCann

Overview

The National Book Award–winning author’s biographical novel of Russian dancer Rudolf Nureyev: “Exuberant and exhilarating . . . a brilliant leap of imagination” (San Francisco Chronicle).

In Dancer, Colum McCann tells the ballet icon’s story through the myriad voices of those who knew him. There is Anna Vasileva, Rudi’s first ballet teacher, who rescues her protégé from the stunted life of his provincial town; Yulia, whose sexual and artistic ambitions are thwarted by her Soviet-sanctioned marriage; and Victor, the Venezuelan street hustler, who reveals the lurid underside of the gay celebrity set.

Spanning four decades and many worlds, from the horrors of the Second World War to the wild abandon of New York in the ‘80s, Dancer is peopled by a large cast of characters, obscure and famous: doormen and shoemakers, nurses and translators, Margot Fonteyn, Eric Bruhn, and John Lennon. And at the heart of the spectacle stands the artist himself, willful, lustful, and driven by a never-to-be-met need for perfection.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781466848696
Publisher:	Holt, Henry & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	07/02/2024
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	354
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Colum McCann is the author of books including This Side of Brightness, Zoli, Songdogs and Let the Great World Spin. He has received the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, a Pushcart Prize, and was named the first winner of the Grace Kelly Memorial Foundation Award and the Princess Grace Memorial Literary Award. He lives in New York City.

Read an Excerpt

From Dancer:
Just when we all thought they were finished, a small blond boy stepped out of the line. He extended his legs, placed his hands firmly on his hips and hitched his thumbs at his back. He bent his neck slightly forward, stretched his elbows out and began. The soldiers in their beds propped themselves up. The boy went to the floor for a squatting dance. We all stood silently watching. The boy grinned. Some soldiers began clapping in rhythm but, just as the dance was about to end, the boy almost fell. His hand slapped the floor and broke the impact. For a moment he looked as if he was about to cry, but he didn't, he was up once more, his blond hair flopping over his eyes.
When he finished the ward was full of applause. Someone offered the boy a cube of sugar. He blushed and slipped it into the top of his sock and then he stood around with his hands in his pockets, rolling his shoulders from side to side.

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.

Editorial Reviews

A fictionalized biography of Rudolf Nureyev (1938-93), chronicled in an understated, intimate narrative from the celebrated dancer's childhood to the height (and excesses) of his fame. The town of Ufa, in the former Soviet region of Bashkir, was about as far off the beaten track as you could get-especially under Stalin, when it was a secret industrial city not even allowed to appear on the map. Yet Ufa was to provide the first audience for one of the greatest stars in ballet history, who made his world premiere as a six-year-old dancing in the wards of WWII military hospitals. Talented from the start but no prodigy, Nureyev trained long and hard to become a dancer-first in Ufa (very much against the wishes of his father, a Party member who dreamed of having an engineer for a son), and later in Leningrad, where he became a member of the famed Kirov Ballet. When success arrived, it arrived quickly, and by the late 1950s Nureyev was doing command performances for Krushchev and the Central Committee. In 1961 he defected to the West, in Paris, transforming himself into cause célèbre-vilified at home (his father publicly denounced him) and idolized abroad. McCann (Everything in This Country Must, 2000, etc.) tells the story from different perspectives, in chapters narrated alternately by Anna Vasileva (Nureyev's first ballet teacher), Victor Parecci (the gay Venezualian prostitute who became his lover in New York), Yulia Sergeevna (his landlady in Leningrad), and Nureyev himself. Like many success stories, Nureyev's presented a depressing spectacle of vanity and decadence toward the end, and the later chapters (largely chronicles of parties, shopping sprees, hangovers, and petty spites) conveythis vividly. The ending, a description of Nureyev's 1987 return to visit his family in Ufa, is appropriate and moving. Balletomanes will love it, but the focus may seem obsessive to anyone who doesn't know who Margot Fonteyn is. Author tour

Kirkus Reviews

A beautiful, floating novel about Nureyev's life and art.” —The New York Times Book Review

“Exuberant and exhilarating . . . A brilliant leap of imagination.” —San Francisco Chronicle

“The goal of a book like this is to catch the spirit of the person and his age. It's a tall order, and one that Dancer pulls off brilliantly.” —The Seattle Times

“Fascinating . . . A triumph of voice . . . McCann's fluid lyricism brilliantly conveys Nureyev's towering professional achievement and the wasteland of his personal life.” —Newsday

“A monumental life . . . Stylistically, Dancer is a leap itself.” —Los Angeles Times

“An engrossing portrait of a man so complex that no mere biography could possibly convey more than a sliver of his personality. . . . The Nureyev who strides impatiently through its pages seems entirely convincing.” —Terry Teachout, The Baltimore Sun

“Every sentence sounds new and beautiful, no matter how often it's read.” —USA Today

“Dancer is the most breathtaking tribute to Nureyev since Jamie Wyeth's famous paintings.” —Esquire

“Dazzling . . . an intimate portrait . . . Dancer is bigger than the dance, bigger than biography, too. . . . Relish McCann's dizzy, fascinating glimpse.” —Miami Herald

From the Publisher

Novelist Colum McCann’s fictional biography of Rudolf Nureyev takes advantage of this unusual form to explore the life and times of perhaps the greatest dancer in history. The talented readers, each with care and emotion, bring multiple points of view to life. Nureyev creates his dancer’s body through raw ambition and sheer strength of will. He pays the price; the list of ailments and stress-related injuries is almost too painful to hear, but with the work comes money, celebrity, and eventually acceptance. Readers of DANCER will be transported to a strange, profane, and ultimately fulfilling universe. This is one not to be missed. R.O. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2004, Portland, Maine

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