Sing Ignis Corporis Infirmat, Ignis sed Animae Perstat for Sanctus Rudolf Nureyev, who brought fire to the ballet stage like few before him or since have done!

Aedicula Antinoi: A Small Shrine of Antinous
Notitiae Doctoris: The Doctor's Notes

First, today was the dies mortis of Rudolf Nureyev in 1993. Nureyev was one of the most important and influential Russian ballet dancers of the 20th century, and perhaps one of the most important and noteworthy male ballet dancers of all time, having transformed the role of male ballet dancers into something more than being the “muscle” that supports the female dancers into an expressive and even independently significant persona. Despite being a sensation in the U.S.S.R., he was often in trouble with the authorities for “mixing with foreigners,” and he eventually defected to France in 1961; he was not in the “good books,” as it were, of the KGB for much of the rest of his life–in fact, Kruschev personally signed an order to have him killed. He became the long-term partner of the Danish dancer Erik Bruhn not long after his defection, and they were together until Bruhn’s death in 1986. Other Sancti, including Andy Warhol and Freddie Mercury, were friends with Nureyev. He ended up contracting AIDS in the 1980s, and nearly until his death he refused to acknowledge the existence of the disease, or that he even had it. Let him be remembered, therefore, for his work and for his life, and not for what caused his death!



http://aediculaantinoi.wordpress.com/2012/01/06/a-dies-mortis-sancti-and-a-feis/