Rodolfo and Rudolf: They tangoed with life

“Tango is a pure expression of what poets try to express in words, but fail: struggle can be enjoyable and pleasant”
(Jorge Louis Borges)

Passion, joy, pain and sorrow – this is tango. If you think that modern and fashionable dance was only forbidden in the USSR, then you are wrong. In 1914 Russian Education Minister L. A. Kasso sent a menacing letter to the heads of education in each province forbidding even mentioning the word “tango” in Russia’s schools. He wrote, “Due to clearly indecent character of the new and increasingly popular dance, called “tango” and as a result of information obtained by the Ministry about attempts to teach it to the students, I kindly ask you to take the strictest measures to prohibit its teachings in your schools. And also, ensure that your students, male or female, do not attend dance lessons, where the shamelessness of “tango” is taught”.

But we shall take a risk and look into this “shamelessness”.

Figure 1.
"Cabeceo" – an invitation to tango – is a true ritual. It starts with an inviting look, which has to contain hints of flirt, directed toward the partner. A fleeting smile, a slight bow, and the eyes can answer: “Yes!” 

Rodolfo Valentino and Rudolf Nureyev invited to tango life itself, which agreed to it, and they started to swirl in the rhythm of tango.

What can be common between an Italian boy, who was born in the 19^th century and lived a short, but bright life, and a Soviet boy, whose life was one big challenge to the society? There are so many coincidences in their biographies…

Figure 2.
“Salida” – literally means "exit", but in tango this is the main entry into the dance. “Parada” – stop. “Ocho” - "eight" (a part of a turn). The main step in tango is the longest step; the leg has to be slightly bent at the knee, the entire body slightly tense, but without losing elasticity and plasticity of the impression. Otherwise one may fall or lose balance, and with an excessive tenseness one will not be able to complete the dance and will get exhausted in the middle of it.

Rodolfo Alfonso Raffaello Pietro Filiberto Guglielmi di Valentino d`Antoniolla was born on 6 May 1895 in a small provincial Italian town called Castellaneta in the family of a former circus performer.

Рудольф Хәмит улы Нуриев was born in a train, headed for Vladivostok, between Irkutsk and Sludyanka on 17 March 1938. His mother Farida along with her daughters was traveling to join with her husband, who served as a military commissar in Siberia.

Circus families and military families: roads, roads, roads … Although, at a certain point in time, both families left the nomadic lifestyle behind.

As a child, the little Rodolfo Valentino was no different than his peers. But one day, one of his female relatives caught his look and said: “My God, this cutie will go far. He has amazing eyes. So little, but from the way he looks at you, your skin burns.”  Rodolfo honestly tried to become like everyone else. He completed studies in agriculture in Genoa, although before that he even thought about a military career.

Military career for his son – this is what Rudolf Nureyev’s father, Hamet, dreamed about. He tried to turn the boy into a replica of himself, which only served to distance Rudolf from his father.

Since early childhood, the little Rudic liked to listen to the music, which came out of the radio set. And after he saw ballet for the first time at a local theatre, Rudic had a dream – to dedicate his life to dancing. “Ballerina” is what his peers called him. They already were entering adult life, working or studying, while he was “doing nothing”, performing in dance troupes in Ufa. 

Rodolfo Valentino did not have the luck of dancing as a child. He left for Paris to study dancing only after graduating from the academy. When he came back to Italy, Rodolfo was a dependent of his parents for a while. He was searching for himself.

In the meantime, Rudolf Nureyev was accepted as a statist in the troupe of the Ufa theatre of opera and ballet. Rudolf was offered a contract, which he refused, dreaming about a serious education in choreography. In 1955, while visiting in Moscow, he obtained a permission to apply to the Moscow school of choreography. But, he even went a step further. He traveled to apply in Leningrad. He came directly to director Shelkov and said “I am Rudolf Nureyev. I want to study here.” And… following exams, he was accepted. Although, Vera Kostrovitskaya, one of the oldest teachers at the school, told him “You can become a brilliant dancer, or nobody. The latter is likely.” It was a challenge, and Rudolf Nureyev liked challenges of the fortune. So, he remembered these words with gratitude his whole life. After graduation he received invitations from three different theatres: Kirov (nowadays, Mariinsky), Bolshoi, and Stanislavski. This happens extremely rarely. Rudolf accepted the invitation of the Kirov theatre. He was invited by Natalia Dudinskaya herself, a prima of the time. One time, a long time ago, in a similar manner, Mathilde Kschessinska had invited Vaslav Nijinsky.

What a strange twist of the fate. The little Rudolf Nureyev’s first dance teacher back in Ufa was Anna Udaltsova, a professional dancer, who had performed in Sergei Diaghilev’s corps de ballet.

Figure 3.
“Gyro” – a turn and a change in direction – are very important elements in tango. Smoothness and precision of the turn have a defining significance.

In 1913, to avoid a military draft and with his family’s permission, Rodolfo Valentino leaves for America. To survive in New York, he changes one profession after another: a street vendor, a gardener, a dishwasher, a cab driver. He learns how to dance tango, which was the most popular dance at the time, and then performs as a dancer-gigolo New York’s “Maxim”. Then Valentino works in a traveling theatre, where he plays a role in the play “No one home”. In 1917 he moves to LA. In Hollywood Valentino debuts in an episodic role in the film “Child Support”. It was exactly at that time that he changes his complicated Italian name Pietro Guglielmi to a more easily remembered Rodolfo Valentino. At first the name change did not help him. One episodic role was followed by another, but success did not come. Only after the release, in 1921, of the film “The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse”, did Rodolfo Valentino wake up famous. How passionate was the Argentine tango in the film! Since that moment tango and Rodolfo Valentino have been synonymous for many people.

In 1961 during a guest performance in Paris, Rudolf Nureyev asked for political asylum in the West. “Sometimes in life you have to make decisions, like lightning, much faster than you can think. I understood it even while dancing, when something went wrong. I also felt it while standing at the Bourget Airport in the shadow of a huge airplane, which was going to take me back to Moscow. Its huge wings hanged over me, like the hands of a wicked magician from the «Swan Lake». Should I have obeyed and made the most out of it? Or, like the ballet main character, should I have refused the order and made a dangerous, possibly fatal dash for freedom? …I did not want to be told what my future should be or what way to consider correct. I want to try and find it for myself. This is what I understand as freedom” - Rudolf Nureyev wrote. He was immediately accepted to the best stages of Europe. In February 1962 Nureyev signed a contract with the London Royal Ballet and was a leading dancer there, along with his partner Margot Fonteyn up until 1970.

In 1977 he rejected an offer to become the Director of the Royal Ballet – he wanted to continue dancing. But in 1986 he did become the Director of the Opera National de Paris, which he managed for 6 years. By the way, there was a time when Vaslav Nijinsky was offered the same position at the Opera National, but he rejected as he was working on creating his own theatrical enterprise.

Figure 4.
“Adorno” - adorning – is a necessary attribute of tango. These can be static and dynamic, lyrical and rhythmical.  

After Rodolfo Valentino and Beatrice Dominguez had performed tango in the film “The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse”, there appeared a Valentino fashion – “tango-mania”. Smoking salons “Tango”, bright-orange color “Tango”, clothes fashion “Tango”… There is even a special figure in tango, called Valentino, after the artist – a tango master. Few people know that Rodolfo Valentino sang. Do you remember the film, “Some Like It Hot”? A millionaire invites Daphne to a yacht to listen to Valentino’s records. Rodolfo Valentino only played in 15 films, but women came to almost every single show with his participation all beautiful and made up, as if it was a date with a lover. Sometimes Valentino made money off of such admiration – he would dance tango with a female film watcher, and was paid several thousand dollars a week for it. An American psychologist, who studied the phenomenon of the actor’s popularity, wrote “… Valentino is agile, slender, and amazingly charming. He is romantic and full of the echoes of the distant blue Italy. He is a symbol of the gone knighthood. He is a light kiss, the sigh of a flute, and the clank of sabre. He is a compilation of King Arthur, Lancelot, Robin Hood and … Don Quixote, Romeo for all ages, an eternal troubadour sighing at the window. ”

One of the brightest tandems in the history of ballet is the tandem of Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev. “Since the first second I knew I had met a friend. It was the lightest moment in my life since I had stayed in the West” – he wrote later. 1962 – “Giselle”, 1963 – “Marguerite and Armand”, 1964 – “Swan Lake” (in the Vienna Opera they were asked encore 89 times!) By the way, in the span of his career, Rudolph Nureyev danced practically all the leading male performances of classical ballet. He gave up to 200 performances per year around the world. Dance critic John Percival wrote: “There is not another dancer in the world, who had as much influence on the history, development and perception of ballet as Rudolph Nureyev. He changed people’s views. A boy from a small Ural town became the reason for a change in the entire art genre.” It was precisely because of Nureyev that the ballet male dancer came out of the shadow of the female ballerina. Similar to Vaslav Nijinsky, he showed the beauty of the male body in dance, frequently coming on stage only wearing a leotard and a dance corset.

“Reverencia profunda” – a deep bow. “Adios” – good-bye.
Rodolfo Valentino died suddenly after an appendix removal in 1926. Up until 1956 female admirers came to his grave on the day of his death. Rodolfo Valentino left after himself a luxurious villa “Eagle’s Nest” in Beverly Hills, 8 cars, 5 horses, a yacht, 12 dogs, 300 neckties, 2000 shirts and debts, which exceeded his worth by 250 000 dollars. In Italy he was raised a Catholic. In America he rejected the faith, but then before death came back to Catholicism, asking for permission and blessing.

In 1984 Rudolph Nureyev found out that he had AIDS. But that did not stop him from active creativity. He continued to direct ballets. 1985 – “Washington Square”, 1986 – Bach’s Suite, 1988 – “Cinderella”, 1992 – “La Bayadère”. The great dancer lived with HIV for over 10 years and died on 06 January 1993. Nureyev is buried in Paris, in the cimetière communal de Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois. His friends and relatives made a service for him according to both Islamic and Christian Orthodox customs as shortly before death he accepted Orthodoxy.

In 1977 Rudolph Nureyev played the role of Rodolfo Valentino in Ken Russell’s film “Valentino”. Many thought that Nureyev played himself. When broadcasting the news of Nureyev’s death many TV channels around the world showed scenes from the film “Valentino”, where Rudolph Nureyev was depicting the recently departed Rodolfo Valentino.

How many coincidences in their different biographies…  What is common among them? Origin, struggle for their own place, for their own self, emigration, ambition, a certain closeness of the souls and a fanatical love for the dance. The dance was the main love of their lives, both Rodolfo Valentino’s and Rudolph Nureyev’s.

“I dance for my own pleasure. Trying to please everyone is not original.”
Rudolph Nureyev

Russian version:
 http://www.etoya.ru/o_muzhchinah/2011/6/19/16911/#Рудольфо_и_Рудольф._Они_пригласили_на_танго_жизнь