Robert Burns Gable was born in Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania. Influenced at an early age by the films of Fred Astaire, he studied tap dancing. While still an art school student, he traveled with the Cole Brothers Circus, performing as a clown. A lifelong dance enthusiast, his early dance viewing included the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo and the Sadlers Wells Ballet, including Margot Fonteyn in the 1949 production of Sleeping Beauty.Other dancers whose careers he followed included Vera Zorina, Alicia Alonso, Igor Youskevitch, John Kriza, and, Rudolf Nureyev.
Mr. Gable's first image of Nureyev was a photograph accompanying a news story about the Russian dancer's defection in 1961. That photograph was kept over his drawing board and was the source of a portrait painted by Gable which he presented three years later to Nureyev after a performance by the dancer and Fonteyn at the old Metropolitan Opera House. Gable saw most of Nureyev's roles throughout his career, including the dancer's only performances in the role of Bluebeard.Having met Nureyev on numerous occasions, Gable remained a devoted “fan” throughout his career in the West.
Starting with that first photograph in 1961, Mr.Gable, also assisted by friends and Nureyev fans in the United States and around the world, collected reviews, photographs, and news items on the Russian dancer, growing into what is probably one of the most comprehensive collections on Rudolf Nureyev in the world.
Rudolf Nureyev, born March 17, 1938, started his dance career as an amateur folk dancer but later (1955-1958) studied at the Leningrad Choreographic School under Aleksandr Pushkin. He entered the Kirov Ballet where for the next three years he danced principal roles with the leading ballerinas of the company. In 1961, on a company tour to Paris, where his performances were greatly admired, he was ordered to return to Russia instead of continuing to London with the company. His career at that point having been an almost continuous conflict with the authorities, he decided instead to request political asylum. In the West he first appeared with the Grand Ballet du Marquis de Cuevas and then in a London Royal Academy of Dancing Gala at the invitation of Margot Fonteyn. This latter appearance was the beginning of a long association with Fonteyn and the Royal Ballet. He also appeared throughout the world dancing and staging classical choreography as well as performing modern repertory such as Frederick Ashton's Marguerite and Armand,Roland Petit's Paradise Lost,Maurice Béjart's Songs of a Wayfarer,Martha Graham's Lucifer,and Rudy Van Dantzig's Ulysses.He also mounted full productions of La Bayadère, Raymonda, Swan Lake, Don Quixote, Sleeping Beauty, Nutcracker,and Romeo and Juliet.In 1972, Nureyev starred in the full-length film I am a Dancer;in 1974-1975, appeared on Broadway in a program entitled Nureyev and Friends;and later in an extended American tour of the musical The King and I.In 1983, he became director of the Paris Opéra Ballet, for which he created contemporary and classical works including his last, the 1992 La Bayadère.Having been diagnosed with AIDS virus in 1984, a fact he steadfastly refused to publicly acknowledge, he succumbed to the disease on January 6, 1993, age 54, in Paris.