JUNE 2021 - AudioFile
Dion Graham’s whispery baritone delivers a quietly commanding performance of Colum McCann’s beautifully written novel inspired by ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev’s life. Growing up behind the Iron Curtain in the postwar Soviet Union, young Rudi faces deprivation, hunger, and government repression. Graham wisely doesn’t attempt character voices yet deftly takes us through Rudi’s angst-filled early life, his defection to the West, his flamboyant behavior, his romances and sexual liaisons, and his eventual fame as a renowned dancer. McCann combines biographical facts drawn from numerous people who knew Nureyev—his sister, his first ballet teacher, his housekeeper, his lovers, and a host of well-known people, including Margot Fonteyn, John Lennon, and JFK. Graham’s intelligent narration provides an intimate, thought-provoking listening experience. S.J.H. © AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine
Publishers Weekly
A chorus of voices breathe new life into the story of Rudolf Nureyev, one of ballet's greatest performers, in this vibrant, imaginative patchwork of a novel by Irish expatriate McCann (This Side of Brightness, etc.). As a seven-year-old peasant boy in 1944, Rudi dances for wounded soldiers in a hospital ward during World War II. By the mid-1950s he has outgrown life in the tiny Soviet town of Ufa, his unfailing determination to perform (against the stern wishes of his father) driving him into the wider world. It is his stubborn persistence more than his natural talent that distinguishes him, but his first teachers see great potential in him, and he is accepted into a ballet company in Leningrad. He defects to France and later moves on to Italy, where "the ovations become more exhausting than the dance" and he is sucked into the drug and disco culture of the late '70s, even after his partner Margot Fonteyn urges him to stay focused. A relationship with New York gay hustler Victor Pareci allows Rudi to indulge his wildest impulses, but his brashness and self-absorption are tempered when he journeys back to his homeland in 1987 in the touching conclusion. The sections narrated by different characters, some central and some marginal, create a kaleidoscopic effect. Faithfully capturing the pathos and grim poverty of the Soviet Union at mid-century, McCann also reveals a splashy tabloid affinity for the excesses and effects of fame and notoriety. Though the focus here is narrower than that of McCann's previous works, the novel is a lovely showcase for his fluid prose and storytelling skill. (Jan. 6) Forecast: Balletomanes are the core audience for this novel, but Nureyev's appeal transcends the world of dance and should attract plenty of general readers as well. McCann's fans may be taken aback by his move from grit to gloss, but those who brave Dancer will likely enjoy it. Author tour. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.
Library Journal
In this unique biographical novel, McCann creates a portrait of Rudolf Nureyev as perceived by the people who knew him. Using a cast of actors (William Dufris and others) to voice Nureyev's contemporaries presents a fractured likeness as if we are seeing reflections of his life in shards of mirror. Not a true biography, this work is more a character study of the many people in the dancer's life and the cultural changes that took place during his lifetime. The actors perform admirably accents from many countries are handled with skill. The audiobook spans Nureyev's years of poverty in the Soviet Union through his wildly decadent life in Andy Warhol's New York seeming to leave few stones unturned. The environments in Dancer are as changeable as light refracted through a prism. Recommended for libraries with contemporary literature or dance collections. Theresa Connors, Arkansas Tech Univ., Russellville Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
Kirkus 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
From the Publisher
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
JUNE 2021 - AudioFile
Dion Graham’s whispery baritone delivers a quietly commanding performance of Colum McCann’s beautifully written novel inspired by ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev’s life. Growing up behind the Iron Curtain in the postwar Soviet Union, young Rudi faces deprivation, hunger, and government repression. Graham wisely doesn’t attempt character voices yet deftly takes us through Rudi’s angst-filled early life, his defection to the West, his flamboyant behavior, his romances and sexual liaisons, and his eventual fame as a renowned dancer. McCann combines biographical facts drawn from numerous people who knew Nureyev—his sister, his first ballet teacher, his housekeeper, his lovers, and a host of well-known people, including Margot Fonteyn, John Lennon, and JFK. Graham’s intelligent narration provides an intimate, thought-provoking listening experience. S.J.H. © AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine
