Rudolf Nureyev
27 Victoria Road · the dancer who defected and remade male ballet
Rudolf Nureyev made a dash for freedom at a Paris airport in 1961, defecting from the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War. In the West he transformed what a male dancer could be – electric, virtuosic, centre-stage – above all in his famous partnership with Margot Fonteyn.
He bought the house at 27 Victoria Road in Kensington in the 1960s. He died of an AIDS-related illness in 1993. English Heritage’s blue plaque marks his London home.