The Real Nureyev - Hardcover

Carolyn Soutar has worked in many sectors of the entertainment industry. She trained at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art and then joined the English National Opera as a stage manager. Carolyn also lectures at various schools in London on staging events. She lives in Suffolk, England.

The Real Nureyev is an intensely personal, under-the-skin depiction of ballet s greatest hero. Written by Carolyn Soutar, who worked with Nureyev at the London Coliseum during the 1980s, this biography focuses a six-year period of his life when his career was drawing to a close and this once phenomenal dancer began to call himself Old Galoshes, in recognition of his fading powers. From his close friends we learn of the changes in Nureyev: from a young man eager to learn, searching for perfection in a body he believed to be flawed, to the knowledgeable and difficult superstar that he would become.

Sometimes funny, sometimes shocking, yet always deeply human, The Real Nureyev is an intimate insider s story of what the ballet icon was really about.

Carolyn Soutar, with her unique perspective, has captured the fragility, the compulsion for perfection, and the tremendous work ethic embodied in Rudolph Nureyev. This moving book is a very full portrait of the great Nureyev.
--Violette Verdy, distinguished professor of ballet, Indiana University (Bloomington)

Full of backstage tradecraft and camaraderie, bags of atmosphere.
--The Guardian (UK)

[Soutar] catches the fascination of the dancer who--even glimpsed in his declining years--will remain unique.
--Manchester Evening News (UK)