588
RO.8ERT GARIS
be publicity. The other kind of question is trickier:
it
has been suggested
that Nureyev's odd intensity strikes a jarring note in the quiet Royal
Ballet style. I have already made clear the degree of my interest in
that style, but the fact is that Nureyev actually fits into it very well.
He doesn't
disappear
into it, but I go to
Swan Lake
to see a prince, not
a well-behaved
zero.
It
is true that Nureyev's dancing comes recklessly
close to the borderline between high style and absurdity. But ht
usually keeps on the right side of the line, and then his audacity con–
trasts, and collaborates, most beautifully with Fonteyn's naturalness. At
the beginning of the second act adagio of
Swan Lake,
for instance, he
hovers over Fonteyn with an intensity that doesn't draw attention from
her but instead passes into her like a charge that makes her quiet
beauty exactly the object of adoration, his and ours, that the ballet
wants as its meaning. Whether this highly temperamental artist will
continue to be content thus to serve the meaning of the great classics
is of course another question; whether he should be is still another. I
wish he had a Balanchine to guide him.
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