Rudolf Khametovich Nureyev (Tatar: Rudolf Xämät ulı Nuriev, Russian: Рудольф Хаметович Нуриев) (March 17, 1938 – January 6, 1993), is regarded as one of the greatest male ballet dancers of the 20th century, alongside Vaslav Nijinsky and Mikhail Baryshnikov.

Nureyev was born on the Trans-Siberian train near Irkutsk, Siberia, Russia, while his mother Farida was travelling to Vladivostok, where his father Hamat, was stationed. He was raised as the only son in a Tatar family in a village near Ufa in republic of Bashkiria. When his mother smuggled him and his sisters into a performance of the ballet "Song of the Cranes", he fell in love with dance. As a child he was encouraged to dance in Bashkir folk performances and his precocity was soon noticed by teachers who encouraged him to train in Leningrad. On a tour stop in Moscow with a local ballet company, Nureyev auditioned for the Bolshoi ballet company and was accepted. However, he felt that the Kirov Ballet school was the best, so he left the local touring company and bought a ticket to Leningrad.

Due to the disruption of Russian cultural life caused by World War II, Nureyev was unable to enroll in a major ballet school until 1955, aged 17, when he was accepted by the Vaganova Choreographic Institute, attached to the Kirov.

Despite his late start, he was soon recognized as an incredibly gifted dancer. Nureyev pushed himself hard, rehearsing for hours in order to make up for the years of training he missed. Under the tutelage of a great teacher, Alexander Pushkin, he blossomed. Pushkin not only took an interest in him professionally, but also allowed the younger dancer to live with him and his wife, with the latter of whom, at 21, he had an affair. Upon graduation, the Kirov and the Bolshoi both wanted to sign him. He continued with the Kirov and went on to become a soloist - extremely unusual for someone of his age and experience.

In his three years with the Kirov, he danced fifteen roles, usually opposite his partner, Ninel Kurgapkina, with whom he was very well paired, although she was almost a decade older than he. He became one of the Soviet Union's best-known dancers, in a country which revered the ballet and made national heroes of its stars. Soon he enjoyed the rare privilege of travel outside the Soviet Union, when he danced in Vienna at the International Youth Festival. Not long after, for disciplinary reasons, he was told he would not be allowed to go abroad again. He was confined to tours of the Soviet republics.

In 1961 Nureyev's situation changed. The Kirov's leading male dancer, Konstantin Sergeyev, was injured, and at the last minute Nureyev was chosen to replace him on the Kirov's European tour. In Paris, his performances electrified audiences and critics, but he broke the rules about mingling with foreigners, which alarmed the Kirov's management. The KGB wanted to send him back to the Soviet Union immediately. As a subterfuge, they told him that he would not travel with the company to London to continue the tour because he was needed to dance at a special performance in the Kremlin. He believed that if he returned to the U.S.S.R., he would likely be imprisoned, due to the fact that KGB agents had been investigating him for being gay. It has been the more popular and accepted belief that he "leaped to freedom" in order to be a "free artist", though many of Nureyev's private accounts, as well the accounts of many of his close friends, tell that he stayed in the west due to the dire consequences of being gay in the Soviet Union.

On June 17, 1961 at the Le Bourget Airport in Paris Rudolf Nureyev defected. Within a week, he was signed up by the Grand Ballet du Marquis de Cuevas and was performing The Sleeping Beauty with Nina Vyroubova. His dramatic defection, outstanding technique, exotic looks, and astonishing charisma on stage made him an international star.

Nureyev's defection also gave him the personal freedom he had been denied in the Soviet Union. On a tour of Denmark he met Erik Bruhn, a dancer ten years his senior, who became his lover, his closest friend and his protector for many years. Bruhn was director of the Royal Swedish Ballet from 1967 to 1972 and Artistic Director of the National Ballet of Canada from 1983 until his death in 1986.

Although he petitioned the Soviet government for many years to be allowed to visit his mother to whom he remained very close, he was not allowed to do so until 1989, when his mother was dying and Mikhail Gorbachev consented to the visit. During this visit, and in spite of his diminished physical ability, he was invited to dance with the Kirov Ballet at the Maryinsky theatre in Leningrad. The visit gave him the opportunity to see many of the teachers and colleagues he had not seen since he defected, including his first ballet teacher in Ufa.

Nureyev's influence on the world of ballet changed the perception of male dancers; in his own productions of the classics the male roles received much more choreography. Another important influence was his crossing the borders between classical ballet and modern dance by performing both. Today it is normal for dancers to receive training in both styles, but Nureyev was originator, and the practice was much criticized in his day.

When AIDS appeared in France in about 1982, Nureyev took little notice. For several years he simply denied that anything was wrong with his health: when, about 1990, he became undeniably ill, he is said to have attributed these to other ailments. He tried several experimental treatments but they did not stop his deteriorating health. Towards the end of his life, as dancing became more and more agonizing, he resigned himself to small non-dancing roles. At the urging of Fonteyn, he had a short but successful conducting career, which was cut short due to health problems.

Eventually, he had to face the reality that he was dying and he won the admiration of many of his detractors by his courage during this period. The loss of his looks pained him, but he continued to struggle through public appearances. At his last appearance, a 1992 production of La Bayadere at the Palais Garnier, Nureyev received an emotional standing ovation. The French Culture Minister, Jack Lang, presented him with France's highest cultural award, the Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. He died in Paris a few months later, aged 54.

His grave, at a Russian cemetery in Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois near Paris, features a tomb draped in a mosaic of an oriental Turkic-style carpet. Nureyev was an avid collector of beautiful carpets and antique textiles.