which the Soviet government considered crucial to its ambitions to demonstrate its "cultural supremacy" over the West. Furthermore, tensions were growing between Nureyev and the Kirov's artistic director Konstantin Sergeyev, who was also the husband of Nureyev's former dance partner Natalia Dudinskaya. After a representative of the French tour organisers saw Nureyev dance in Leningrad in 1960, the French organisers urged Soviet authorities to let him dance in Paris, and he was allowed to go. In Paris, his performances electrified audiences and critics. Oliver Merlin in Le Monde wrote, I will never forget his arrival running across the back of the stage, and his catlike way of holding himself opposite the ramp. He wore a white sash over an ultramarine costume, had large wild eyes and hollow cheeks under a turban topped with a spray of feathers, bulging thighs, immaculate tights. This was already Nijinsky in Firebird. Nureyev was seen to have broken the rules about mingling with foreigners and allegedly frequented gay bars in Paris, which alarmed the Kirov's management and the KGB agents observing him. The KGB wanted to send him back to the Soviet Union. On 16 June 1961 when the Kirov company gathered at Le Bourget Airport in Paris to fly to London, Sergeyev took Nureyev aside and told him that he must return to Moscow for a special performance in the Kremlin, rather than go on to London with the rest of the company. Nureyev became suspicious and refused. Next he was told that his mother had fallen severely ill and he needed to go home immediately to see her. Nureyev refused again, believing that on return to the USSR he was likely to be imprisoned. With the help of French police and a Parisian socialite friend, Clara Saint, who had been engaged to Vincent Malraux, the son of the French Minister of Culture, André Malraux, Nureyev escaped his KGB minders and asked for asylum. Sergeyev and the KGB tried to dissuade him, but he chose to stay in Paris. Within a week, he was signed by the Grand Ballet du Marquis de Cuevas and performed The Sleeping Beauty with Nina Vyroubova. On a tour of Denmark he met Erik Bruhn, soloist at the Royal Danish Ballet. Bruhn became his lover, his closest friend and his protector until Bruhn's death in 1986. He and Bruhn both appeared as guest dancers with the newly formed Australian