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Broken Rules. At 15, Nureyev joined the Ufa Opera's corps de ballet, saved his money, and a year later bought a one-way ticket to Leningrad to audition for the Kirov. Though by Russian standards he was about six years late in beginning his formal training, he was accepted for the Kirov's ballet school. He immediately distinguished himself as its most brilliant and most unmanageable student, violated every curfew regulation, fought with his instructors. He lectured a teacher in front of the whole company on the evils of the Kirov's "systematic wearing-down of the individual," took private English lessons and read J. D. Salinger. He refused to join the Komsomol, a training group for the Communist Party. He was guilty of fraternizing with dancers from foreign touring companies. He was not being subversive, or even rebelling. Nureyev is totally apolitical. He simply wanted to see everybody and anybody who danced.
When the Kirov made its debut in Paris in 1961, a Soviet plainclothesman tailed Nureyev wherever he went. And he went everywhere, touring the city with French friends he had met. This brought more scoldings from the Kirov management, but Nureyev persisted. Then, when the company arrived at Le Bourget that June morning to fly to London, Nureyev was informed that he was to go instead to Moscow to dance in the Kremlin, and could rejoin the tour later. "Dance in the Kremlin indeed," scoffs Nureyev in retrospect. "I knew this was a crisis. I was like a bird inside a net. A bird must fly, see the neighbor's garden and what lies beyond." So he flew.
The Team. Paris' Marquis de Cuevas Ballet instantly hired Nureyev for $400 a week, more than he had made in six months with the Kirov. His mother, brought to Moscow by the government, called him every day on government orders and pleaded with him to come home. But, he says, he forever erased any thoughts of returning when, at his debut performance, the local Communists staged a raucous demonstration and scattered the stage with broken glass.
During his first year in the West, Nureyev was looking for a permanent home with one of the major companies. Most of all, he wanted to dance under Balanchine. But when a meeting was finally arranged, the great man said: "Rudolf, when you are tired of playing the prince, come to me." Eventually Nureyev decided that Balanchine was exercising a "castrating influence" on the male dancer and said so publicly. That eliminated the New York City Ballet. Five months after his defection, Nureyev received an invitation from Margot Fonteyn to dance at her annual London charity gala. Both were so instantly taken with each other ("He is the first Russian I met who can make me laugh," she said) that they decided to team up. They made their debut in February 1962 in Giselle, and the flame was lit.