Seeking change...

Being a keen reader, people’s life stories and experiences have always fascinated me especially that of artists – painters, sculptors, musicians and more so dancers and choreographers. I recently finished reading McCann’s “Dancer” based upon the famous Rudolph Nureyev which beautifully maps the life of the fiery ballet dancer. Starting at a point of socio-political conflicts, it beautifully portrays the journey of Rudi from an untrained, folk dancer entertaining the soldiers at the hospital to becoming one of the worlds’s accomplished soloists. McCann’s absolutely brilliant style of merging the real with fiction giving a chance to peep into the lives of other incredible figures from the world of dance like Margaret Fonteyn and a look into the monumental Kirov theatre with the constantly shifting narrators does definitely make the book a must read. But to my personal interest are some of the issues that the book raises through Rudi’s life as a dancer and which stand alive almost seventeen years after his death and breathed alive from the time of his struggle to follow his passion.
‘...Rudik’s genius was in allowing his body to say things that he couldn’t otherwise express... more intuition in him than intellect, more spirit than knowledge...’ Nureyev found his own ways to overcome anything that stood in his way as a dancer. His passion seems almost maddening and obsessive at most times, filled with “a dangerous energy” at all times. Coming from a place where dance is still not accepted as a mainstream profession, I immediately connected to what was once told to Nureyev (by his own father) who later went on to change the identity and perception of a male ballet dancer on stage- “there is nothing wrong with dance... but it’s what you do in the world that makes you...you are made for more than dance...you will be a great doctor, an engineer.”
Once I finished reading the book, I dread to imagine what if Rudolph Nureyev would have listened to the callings of his times rather than that of his heart, what if he survived by doing what his father suggested- not only would it have been a terrible personal loss to a person with such gifted charm and persona but also a loss of the purpose that he was born with and remained committed to even when his physical body started to give up. How are dancers supposed to explain and change a society which only knows to live in its secure, unchallenged and claustrophobic beliefs? Every age in the past seems to have seen its pioneers leaving behind trails of change in thought, movement and mindsets but yet the process is slow. Being a dancer in India, where I write from, I am still wondering at the pace and the minuteness of acceptance and understanding!