Perpetual Motion

by Otis Stuart

Rudolph Nureyev rewrote not only our perception of dance but of the arts in general, and in several critical ways helped define our contemporary Western sensibility. Nureyev's defection turned the 1950s into the 1960s, signalling the move from a decade of repression to one of rebellion. From the start, he shattered every traditional category, he became the first high art pop hero, the first opera house artist to become a tabloid sensation. For the first time in its history, ballet moved from a sheltered specialist field to mainstream news, as Nureyev reinvented the cloistered ballet dancer as king of the international nightclub circuit. "Perpetual Motion" aims to show, through a detailed account of the dancer's life and times, why for three decades the world followed his every move.