Kirill Serebrennikov’s ballet “Nureyev” is now available online

Forwarded From Plot (Anton Khitrov)

Kirill Serebrennikov’s ballet “Nureyev” is now available online

This production has had a peculiar fate.

The dance biopic about the famous émigré dancer Rudolf Nureyev premiered at the Bolshoi Theatre in 2018; Serebrennikov created it together with choreographer Yuri Possokhov and composer Ilya Demutsky. The premiere could have taken place earlier, had it not been for Culture Minister Vladimir Medinsky, who saw “LGBT propaganda” in the production and forced the theater to postpone it (the main character was gay, and the creators chose not to hide that).

In 2019, “Nureyev” won the Golden Mask, but as early as 2022 the Bolshoi Theatre began canceling its performances because of the inconvenient surname of an anti-war director on the poster. In 2023, it was removed from the repertoire altogether — because of that very “LGBT propaganda.”

A month ago, Serebrennikov revived the production at the Deutsche Oper (Berlin). People say the audience greeted it with delight. And now the video version of “Nureyev” is available on YouTube. So if you missed it in Moscow, you can watch it now, and completely legally. I missed it, by the way, so I’ll be watching!

YouTube

Noureev - Ballet by Kirill Serebrennikov and Yuri Possokhov - ARTE Concert

Struck from the Bolshoi’s repertoire in 2023, this evocation of the life and art of Rudolf Nureyev, staged by Kirill Serebrennikov and choreographed by Yuri Possokhov, is being revived for the first time outside Russia. A long-awaited rebirth, danced by…