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A natural rebel who was in constant hot water with the directors of the Kirov school, Nureyev became increasingly withdrawn after his defection. He is continually harassed by Russian embassy officials who try to persuade him to return, and for a while his mother called him daily from Russia at Soviet government expense. Nureyev has no apartment of his own in London, in fact has little life of his own at all outside Covent Garden. Away from the dance, says a friend, "he's a monk.''
Nureyev attributes his temperament to the fact that he was born a Tartar, not a Russian. It is his Tartar blood, says Nureyev, that gives him "something in common with wild, untamable animals." What he needs most, and in this even his admirers agree, is a little taming—the kind of rigid discipline that he might well have gotten had he stayed in Russia.
Outside Russia, a star attraction no matter what he does, he might find such discipline only under one of his idols, like George Balanchine of the able but low-budget New York City Ballet.