![\"Rudolf](\"http:\/\/www.tomgrimshaw.com\/tomsblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/Rudolf_Nureyev-206x300.jpg\")
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Excerpts of a letter Rudolf Nureyev wrote, to the dance community about his own life as a dancer, while dying of AIDS:<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was the smell of my skin changing, it was getting ready before class, it was running away from school and after working in the fields with my dad because we were ten brothers, walking those two kilometers to dance school.<\/p>\n
I would never have been a dancer, I couldn\u2019t afford this dream, but I was there, with my shoes worn on my feet, with my body opening to music, with the breath making me above the clouds. It was the sense I gave to my being, it was standing there and making my muscles words and poetry, it was the wind in my arms, it was the other guys like me that were there and maybe wouldn\u2019t be dancers, but we swapped the sweat, silences, barely.<\/p>\n
For thirteen years I studied and worked, no auditions, nothing, because I needed my arms to work in the fields. But I didn\u2019t care: I learned to dance and dance because it was impossible for me not to do it, it was impossible for me to think I was elsewhere, not to feel the earth transforming under my feet plants, impossible not to get lost in music, impossible not not to get lost in music using my eyes to look in the mirror, to try new steps.<\/p>\n
Everyday I woke up thinking about the moment I would put my feet inside my slippers and do everything by tasting that moment. And when I was there, with the smell of camphor, wood, tights, I was an eagle on the rooftop of the world, I was the poet among poets, I was everywhere and I was everything.<\/p>\n
I remember a ballerina El\u00e8na Vadislowa, rich family, well taken care of, beautiful. She wanted to dance as much as I did, but later I realized it wasn\u2019t like that. She danced for all the auditions, for the end of the course show, for the teachers watching her, to pay tribute to her beauty.<\/p>\n
Two years prepared for the Djenko contest. The expectations were all about her. Two years she sacrificed part of his life. She didn\u2019t win the contest. She stopped dancing, forever. She didn\u2019t resist. That was the difference between me and her.<\/p>\n
I used to dance because it was my creed, my need, my words that I didn\u2019t speak, my struggle, my poverty, my crying. I used to dance because only there my being broke the limits of my social condition, my shyness, my shame. I used to dance and I was with the universe on my hands, and while I was at school, I was studying, arraising the fields at six am, my mind endured because it was drunk with my body capturing the air.<\/p>\n
I was poor, and they paraded in front of me guys performing for pageants, they had new clothes, they made trips. I didn\u2019t suffer from it, my suffering would have been stopping me from entering the hall and feeling my sweat coming out of the pores of my face. My suffering would have been not being there, not being there, surrounded by that poetry that only the sublimation of art can give. I was a painter, poet, sculptor.<\/p>\n
The first dancer of the year-end show got hurt. I was the only one who knew every move because I sucked, quietly every step. They made me wear his new, shiny clothes and dictated me after thirteen years, the responsibility to demonstrate. Nothing was different in those moments I danced on stage, I was like in the hall with my clothes off. I was and I used to perform, but it was dancing that I cared.<\/p>\n
The applause reached me far away. Behind the scenes, all I wanted was to take off the uncomfortable tights, but everyone\u2019s compliments and I had to wait. My sleep wasn\u2019t different from other nights. I had danced and whoever was watching me was just a cloud far away on the horizon.<\/p>\n
From that moment my life changed, but not my passion and need to dance. I kept helping my dad in the fields even though my name was on everyone\u2019s mouth. I became one of the brightest stars in dance.<\/p>\n
Now I know I\u2019m going to die, because this disease doesn\u2019t forgive, and my body is trapped in a pram, blood doesn\u2019t circulate, I lose weight. But the only thing that goes with me is my dance my freedom to be.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m here, but I dance with my mind, fly beyond my words and my pain. I dance my being with the wealth I know I have and will follow me everywhere: that I have given myself the chance to exist above effort and have learned that if you experience tiredness and effort dancing, what if you dance sits for effort, if we pity our bleeding feet, if we chase only the aim and don\u2019t understand the full and unique pleasure of moving, we don\u2019t understand the deep essence of life, where the meaning is in its becoming and not in appearing.<\/p>\n
Every man should dance, for life. Not being a dancer, but dancing.<\/p>\n
Who will never know the pleasure of walking into a hall with wooden bars and mirrors, who stops because they don\u2019t get results, who always needs stimulus to love or live, hasn\u2019t entered the depths of life, and will abandon every time life won\u2019t give him what he wants.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s the law of love: you love because you feel the need to do it, not to get something or to be reciprocated, otherwise you\u2019re destined for unhappiness.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m dying, and I thank God for giving me a body to dance so that I wouldn\u2019t waste a moment of the wonderful gift of life.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Excerpts of a letter Rudolf Nureyev wrote, to the dance community about his own life as a dancer, while dying of AIDS: \u201cIt was the smell of my skin changing, it was getting ready before class, it was running away from school and after working in the fields with my dad because we were ten … <\/p>\n