Lending New Meaning to the Term ‘Diva’
From Peter Conrad’s Guardian review of a new biography of Rudolph Nureyev by Julie Kavanagh:
If he didn’t like a ballerina he was partnering, he ungallantly let her thud to the ground. Once, he dragged an uncooperative dancer across the floor by her necklace, grazing her throat; he fractured the jaw of a male colleague who annoyed him. He ripped up costumes, hurled Thermos flasks into mirrors, spat at photographers and kicked police cars. In a tizz at Zeffirelli’s chintzy villa, he hurled a wrought-iron chair at his host and pulled down a curtain rod with which he pounded some majolica pottery to smithereens. Expelled from the premises, he paused to shit on the steps like an indignant, incontinent dog.
There’s more here, too.
