Ballet's first pop icon, Rudolf Nureyev revolutionized an old art form, bringing a new young audience to opera houses, and sparking "Rudimania" across the globe.
From his birth on a train in Siberia at the height of Stalin's Terrors, Nureyev's life was extraordinary. His career was decided at theage of eight, and nine years later, leaving his Tatar peasant family behind him, he realized his dream of studying at the Kirov's school. The account of Nureyev's Leningrad years has never been more compellingly told, focusing a teacher of genius who molded the late starter into a star; the guilty affair with his beloved mentor's wife; and the dancer's homosexual rite of passage, a secret liaison with an East German student who was the catalyst behind Nureyev's escape to the West.  The 1961 defection was just the beginning. Nureyev spent the rest of his life breaking barriers, re-inventing male technique; "crashing the gates" of modern dance; iconoclastically changing ballet's most hallowed classics; and making dance history by partnering England's prima ballerina assoluta Margot Fonteyn -- a woman twice his age.