Nureyev, choreographed by Yuri Possokhov, staged by Kirill Serebrennikov and composed by Ilya Demutsky, celebrated its German premiere on 21 March 2026 at the Deutsche Oper performed by Staatsballett Berlin.
Rudolf Nureyev was a notorious workaholic. Born on a train to Siberia into a Tatar Muslim family in 1938, Nureyev began his ballet training relatively late, at the age of 17. He rose to prominence quickly and, at 23, defected during a tour in Paris, living in exile from the USSR for the rest of his life. Until his death from AIDS-related complications in 1993, Nureyev never stopped working. The website of the Rudolf Nureyev Foundation describes how his determination allowed him to keep going despite his declining health. “The main thing is dancing,” the Foundation quotes Nureyev as saying, “and before it withers away from my body, I will keep dancing until the last moment, the last drop.” Dedicated to supporting ballet dancers and continuing Nureyev’s legacy, the Foundation was founded with his inheritance—he was known as the richest man in ballet. For whom, I wonder, did he want his memory to live on?
The pace of Yuri Possokhov and Kirill Serebrennikov’s homage to the ballet dancer’s life reflects his tireless commitment to dancing, unfolding at a rapid clip over two hours and twenty minutes, including an intermission. At the heart of the piece’s breathless pace, David Soares, in the role of Nureyev, remains onstage for most of the performance, often dancing with high energy.
We watch Nureyev’s life in chronological order, punctuated by brief auction scenes in which his belongings are sold at high prices after his death. The focus is primarily external, each scene highlighting a different episode of his life: ballet school, the defection, his first experiences in Paris, the onset of fame…
One of the few glimpses into Nureyev’s inner life in the piece appears in a letter from his pupil Charles Jude, who writes that although Nureyev chose freedom, he remained nostalgic for his homeland. Another occurs in a scene where Nureyev shouts at younger dancers: “Do you think people pay all this money and come to see you? They come to see me, not you! […] You want me to retire? I’m going to dance longer. Get out!” His fear of being forgotten seems to push him to the limits, and I wonder by whom he wished to be seen. By his family and home country he left behind? Or just by as many people as possible, to take this acknowledgement as a proof for himself that his choice to leave was the right one?
Or was it an attempt to ease his dark solitude? Though I struggled to find points of connection with the ballet, I related to this loneliness, as a person who also left my home country and family at a young age to seek freedom and worked without ever stopping. In his 1962 autobiography, Nureyev: An Autobiography with Pictures, Nureyev describes his defection as entering “total solitude,” a new freedom that felt very dark. Yet, he continues, this was “the only possible choice.”
It is a sorrowful fact that, in present-day Russia, Nureyev would still be criminalized and likely forced to make the same decision to leave his home country in pursuit of freedom. Nureyev premiered in 2017 at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow and remained in its repertoire until 2023—until it was withdrawn under Russia’s “anti-LGBT propaganda” legislation. “For a bird must fly,” Nureyev wrote in his autobiography about his decision to defect; today I suspect he would have made the same leap towards freedom.
Nureyev, choreographed by Yuri Possokhov, staged by Kirill Serebrennikov and composed by Ilya Demutsky, celebrated its German premiere on 21 March 2026 at the Deutsche Oper. Additional performances will take place in April 2026 and in the spring of 2027.
