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Hello and thank you for downloading the podcast of Witness History from the BBC World Service.

Today we're going back 60 years to one of the most highprofile defections during the Cold War.

In 1961, the great ballet dancer Rudolf Nuref sought asylum from the Soviet Union at Paris Airport.

In 2011, Louise Hidalgo spoke to a French dancer who was there. Rudolph Nureif, the Soviet ballet star who walked out on the Leningrad State Kirof Ballet and asked

for asylum in France, is to dance in the country of his adoption. It's the summer of 1961, Paris, and Rudolf Nurev, principal dancer with the Kyrov Ballet,

has just become the world's most famous asylum seeker.

The press in Paris learn that Nurev the world's most famous asylum seeker.

The press in Paris learned that Nureyeth declined to be sent back to Russia,

knowing that he was very much out of favor with the authorities.

At this stage he would not say more, but continued his rehearsal for the sleeping beauty

Ballet experts declared that the young Russian is the Nijinsky of the 1960s

Rudolph Nurev had arrived in Paris with the Kyrov ballet a few weeks earlier.

It was his first trip outside Russia.

The Kyrov were performing at the Paris Opera, where a young Pierre Lacott was principal dancer.

Pierre Lacott didn't know it at the time, of course, but he was to play a key role in the drama that was about to

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