NUREYEV: THE RUSSIAN YEARS (AND THE NASHVILLE CONNECTION)

UPDATED WITH NASHVILLE INFORMATION

Featuring recently recorded interviews with Russian friends and colleagues now free to discuss his early years, as well as archival footage not seen in the West, GREAT PERFORMANCES: Nureyev: The Russian Years (Wed., August 29, 8 p.m. on NPT) traces the dancer’s career with fresh insight and candor, revealing “not only the huge appeal he possessed from the start, but how maniacally he worked to achieve it” according to Newsday. The performance documentary reveals why he felt compelled to defect in 1961 — his daring quest for personal and artistic freedom — as well as his painful homecoming many years later under the hostile eye of the KGB.

Newsday adds that “…the film is a startling reminder of how starkly the world was divided not long ago into the capitalist West and the communist East.”

There’s a Nashville connection here of course. According to Nureyev.org, Nureyev and The Joffrey Ballet performed a TRIBUTE TO NIJINSKY in Nashville in August 1980 that was recorded by WNET, presumably for PBS broadcast.

During “Nureyev & Friends: The Farewell Tour” in 1991, Nureyev was in Nashville when he told a Chicago Sun-Times reporter “This is not a farewell tour. It was not my idea to call it that. There are so many requests for engagements to dance still coming in that I see no point in stopping.”