My wife and I watched this at home on DVD from our public library.
While the focus of this movie is the 1961 defection of ballet dancer Nureyev you can't really tell that part of his life without understanding his beginnings, from being born on a train in 1938 to studying under the demanding Soviet system. Most of that takes up the first half of the movie.
I remember Nureyev well, he was such an inventive dancer and became popular world-wide in the 1960s and 1970s but I never knew his story. When the company of dancers would tour outside the USSR they were not supposed to exchange ideas or even talk to people from other countries but Nureyev never really followed the rules. When it looked like going back home might be bad for him, in France he defected, asking for political asylum. The scenes that retell and dramatize the incident are some of the best in this movie.
For the role Oleg Ivenko, a Ukranian who really is a ballet dancer in Russia and a first-time actor, plays Rudolf Nureyev and he plays him very well.
A really well made movie and a well told story, we enjoyed it.
