Rudolf Nureyev’s art and style are gorgeously revived in Calif. museum exhibit

Nureyev’s creative appetites also ran to refashioning some of ballet’s iconic works. One of his most radical off-script departures was the grandiose 1986 production of “Cinderella” that he choreographed for the Paris Opera Ballet, which he was running at the time. It was set in the 1930s, and the title misfit goes from Depression grimness to Hollywood glamour when she’s discovered by a producer and makes her film debut. For Nureyev’s portrayal of the cigar-chomping producer/fairy godmother, Japanese fashion designer Hanae Mori created a full-cut herringbone wool coat, modeled on an Yves Saint Laurent topper Nureyev had snagged at a Paris flea market.

The exhibit’s largest display is also the most poignant: Tutus from the production of “La Bayadere” that Nureyev staged for the Paris Opera Ballet in 1992 are arrayed like statuary, with the gently sloping skirts that Nureyev preferred as more graceful than the paper-plate stiffness of the Russian style he’d known at the Kirov. As the costumes stand empty, film of the ballet’s “Kingdom of the Shades” scene is projected on the wall behind them. Over and over, dancers in white seem to float across the darkened space in a sequence of meditative choreography meant to evoke the afterlife.

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Nureyev oversaw this production while gravely ill with AIDS, and the ballet premiered just three months before his death at 54. What must he have thought as he witnessed its images of eternity, reflecting his eye for the beauty of the body, even as his was failing him?

The physical and the metaphysical swirl together throughout this exhibition. The supple architecture of stage couture, designed for flight and artistic impact, is fascinating to examine up close. It offers a poetic dimension, as well. As the catalogue puts it, “These costumes which dressed his dreams have kept a bit of his memory.” Putting them on view brings the artist closer to us.

These displays made me want to see more collections of dance-related costumes, photos and objets d’art. Those who first touched them may be gone, but what they left behind can still fire the imagination — and remind us of the human spirit behind the art. In Nureyev’s case, it’s especially sweet.