These 5 books about famous ballet dancers Natalia Makarova and Rudolf Nureyev provide an inside look at the lives of two of the dance world’s most celebrated dancers.

1. A Dance Autobiography by Natalia Makarova

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2. Nureyev: His Life by Diane Solway

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“Everyone knows the name Rudolf Nureyev, but does anyone know the man behind the myth? Diane Solway does; she spent over four years and conducted more than 200 interviews with his family, his friends and lovers, his colleagues, and even his doctors to research Nureyev: His Life the first book to capture him as he was onstage and off — a great artist whose talent was matched only by his steely will to succeed.”

3. The Ballet Lover by Barbara L. Baer

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“Paris, 1970s: the orchestra plays the first ominous note of Swan Lake. In the audience sits Geneva, an American journalist and ballet lover, waiting for the heart-stopping beauty and seduction of the romantic duet to start, but instead she witnesses Rudolf Nureyev failing to catch his Russian partner Natalia Makarova, allowing her to fall with a crash upon the stage… The Ballet Lover is a refined, mesmerizing, fictional account of two of the most celebrated dancers in the dance world, how one compromised the other, and how the drama on the stage often mirrors those played out in real life.”

4. Natalia Makarova: Ballerina by Richard Austin

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5. Perpetual Motion by Otis Stuart

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“A revealing biography of the greatest male ballet dancer of our time–the first full-fledged portrait since Nureyev’s death from AIDS in 1992, and the first book to disclose the private life he worked so diligently to obscure. 8 pages of black-and-white photos.”

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