Alexander Bland profiled Rudolf Nureyev for the
Observer Magazine of 2 July 1972 (‘Nureyev: the Leap that Lasted’) on the eve of the London premiere of the first full-length film about him,
I Am a Dancer. The leap in the headline referred to his defection to the west from Russia in 1961 when he was in a touring troupe in Paris.
Nureyev, then 33, was a global phenomenon, who ‘would make the international headlines if he fell off a bicycle’, wrote Bland. Amazingly there were those who had predicted a ‘quick decline into obscurity’, but he’d been a superstar for 11 years. His ‘softest smile seems to hint at hidden daggers. It was this mixture of gentleness and potential violence that led many writers to compare him to a jungle cat, and it exerts a potent sex-appeal’.