(8 of 10)
Twist & Change. The dizzying suddenness of Nureyev's arrival has left him, as a friend says, "like a mobile, changing with every twist of the wind." Hardly a model of stability in the first place, his foul-weather moods have grown to gale intensity. While performing at the Spoleto festival last year, he was invited to an informal dinner party at Composer Gian Carlo Menotti's home. When he arrived, he promptly ordered one of the guests to "get me a plate." When the guest politely informed him that it was a serve-your-self proposition, he snorted: "Nureyev never serves himself! He is served!" With that, he smashed his whisky glass on the floor and stomped out. When the festival's photographer wanted to take some publicity shots of Nureyev and Fonteyn, the tempestuous Tartar angrily planked himself down in a chair and growled: "I give you three minutes, photographer, and I start counting now." Would Nureyev stand next to Fonteyn? "No, one minute gone." Could he sort of lean toward her? "No, everyone leans toward Nureyev, two minutes gone . . ."
On balmier days he can be the very soul of wit and charm. During rehearsal breaks he will entertain Margot with a rubber-legged imitation of Charlie Chaplin. When a gushing teen-ager accosted him in a Soho pub recently and announced that she had drawn his face so many times she could see it in her dreams, Rudi purred: "You should draw your own face, it's so much prettier." Some nights, at the slightest insistence, he will drag Margot Fonteyn out on the dance floor at a post-performance party and thrill the guests with a torrid twist. Then the next night he will meet the same request with a sneering remark: "I'm not your performing bear."
Little Habit. Friends who know him best endure his huffs with a weary smile, knowing that he will be back in the morning with gifts and apologies. To contain such moods, Nureyev finds that Scotch, "a little habit I picked up in the West," is helpful. Charging out of a party for the Royal Ballet in Toronto two years ago, he decided to walk the white line in the center of the street back to his hotel. To the accompaniment of honking cars, he tried a few pirouettes. When a policeman suddenly appeared, he finished off with a high kick aimed at the cop's head. He was handcuffed, dragged to the station, and later released without being charged.
He once ascribed his teeter-totter personality to his Tartar ancestry. Now he blames it all on Pisces. "I am Pisces," he says, showing the gold Pisces medal he has been wearing around his neck since he took up astrology. "Very sexy, in love with love, crazy, loyal and disloyal, good and bad, lost in pools and oceans of green water." And he is—a baffling maze of moods and manners. Now that he has shaken the shackles of the Kirov, he says he feels weak and alone. He sees conspiracies surrounding him. Of impresarios, he says: "You must remember that you are giving food to people who would gladly cut you up and eat you. It's you who always pays. It's those others who eat and go to bed early."