Ρούντολφ Νουρέγιεφ - Άλμα προς την Ελευθερία

The curtain rises on a hospital bed. A dancer's body, decades past its prime, still holds the discipline of someone trained to defy gravity. This is Nureyev's final hours, and Sergei Yankovsky plays them in a production that has drawn over a million viewers since its 2007 premiere at the Mariinsky Theatre in Saint Petersburg.

Yankovsky studied classical ballet for this role, blurring the line between actor and dancer. The script moves between the dying man and his younger self: the boy from Ufa, the defection at Le Bourget, the obsessive rehearsals.

If you want light entertainment, a deathbed monologue about artistic obsession is not that. But if you want one performer carrying an entire life onstage, Yankovsky has been doing exactly that for nineteen years.

Theatro Katia Dandoulaki, Agiou Meletiou 61A. Performances 25 and 26 April at 20:30.

Nureyev would have understood that kind of stamina.