Yan Sham-Shackleton's Blog

Novel Writing: Rereading a hot sex scene in the book. ick-too early for that. Not everyone will read at 2am. What if they read at breakfast? I guess I need to clean it up. Boo.

Harlem to Dakota

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Porsche’s Newest 911 – 620 Horsepower & 20 MPG | Autopia | Wired.com

On the heels of Ferrari unveiling its new 599 GTO, Porsche has unveiled its most powerful production 911 ever. The new 911 GT2 RS is set to make its debut later this summer at the Moscow Auto Show, but Porsche couldn’t wait to dampen the excitement over the new Ferrari by releasing some impressive numbers of its own.

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Allan, his car...

2003 Porsche 911 Carrera 4S - Long-Term Road Test - Auto Reviews - Car and Driver

A case can be made that the Porsche 911 is our favorite car. As evidence, we must confess that in the past 13 years we've managed to filch four 911s for long-term tests. That's a straight-faced way of saying we've had a 911 parked in our lot for about eight of those 13 years.

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The merchant prince of ballet - Rudolf Nureyev; excerted from 'Perpetual Motion' - Cover Story | Dance Magazine | Find Articles at BNET

After sex, money is the aspect of Nureyev's offstage life that most often causes little beads of sweat to bubble across the foreheads of his friends and colleagues. Conversation comes to a withering halt, glasses of wine disappear in a gulp, and the subject is closed as soon as it's been opened. (I actually saw a veteran European choreographer, a man not known for keeping his mouth shut, turn sheet-white at the very mention of Nureyev's vast financial holdings.) Everyone agrees that Nureyev was not a man to squander his cash, except on himself. "When Rudolf traveled," a colleague from the

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Articles about Rudolf Nureyev - New York Times

Rudolf Nureyev, Actor and King

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CLOSE TO HOME; Collected Pieces From a Passionate Life - New York Times

FOR several months in 1990, while reporting an article on Rudolf Nureyev, I found myself, memo book in hand, in the daunting presence of the man who kindled my passion for dance and permanently ingrained in me a romantic ideal that would prove entirely unattainable.

Rudolf Nureyev died on Jan. 6, 1993, at the age of 54. After that, I would walk past his apartment at the Dakota and gaze up at his five arching windows overlooking the park: one for the music room, three for the living room, one for the guest room.

At first these windows were shuttered. Then someone opened them, and you could see the Reynolds above the mantelpiece and the Roman marble torso. Later, the torso was pushed to one side; the paintings were removed. Then paint-spattered work ladders stood where the paintings had been. I could not study those five windows without noting that just as grief has its particular stages, so there are distinct and particular stages to the unraveling of a life.

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Nureyev's ballet slippers sold at auction for $18,619 - Rudolf Nureyev | Dance Magazine | Find Articles at BNET

Nureyev's ballet slippers sold at auction for $18,619 - Rudolf Nureyev

by Jann Parry

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London - When would someone pay $18,619 for a pair of ballet slippers that even a sale catalogue described as "considerably soiled and worn, patches and repair's at the toe"? When the slippers were worn by the man considered the greatest male ballet dancer of his time. For that is indeed what a pair of slippers worn Rudolf Nureyev sold for at the second sale of the late dancer's belongings, held at Christie's auction house in November.

The sale included the slippers and other items from Nureyev's sumptuously decorated Paris apartment at 23 quai Voltaire, on the Left Bank of the Seine. The apartment, the ballet star's principal home from the mid-1980s, was designed in the style of a nineteenth century French salon - "very cozy at night," recalled one of his friends present at the auction, "but rather too theatrical for the morning."

In all, twenty-one pairs of Nureyev's footwear were sold for a total of $123,337. Most of the shoes and dance boots were bought up by Albert Cohen of Long Island, New York. Cohen had bought some of the dancer's shoes in the first auction, in New York, and was evidently determined to corner the market. According to officials at the auction house, Cohen told Christie's he and his wife would be willing to lend the ballet slippers to dance schools and institutions.

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The Dakota - eNotes.com Reference

The general layout of the apartments is in the French style of the period, with all major rooms not only connected to each other, en filade, in the traditional way, but also accessible from a hall or corridor, an arrangement that allows a natural migration for guests from one room to another, especially on festive occasions, yet gives service staff discreet separate circulation patterns that offer service access to the main rooms. The principal rooms, such as parlors or the master bedroom, face the street, while the dining room, kitchen, and other auxiliary rooms are oriented toward the courtyard. Apartments thus are aired from two sides, which was a relative novelty in Manhattan at the time. (In the Stuyvesant building, which was built in 1869, a mere ten years earlier, and which is considered Manhattan's first apartment building in the French style, many apartments have windows to one side only.) Some of the drawing rooms are 49 ft (15 m) long, and many of the ceilings are 14 ft (4.3 m) high; the floors are inlaid with mahogany, oak, and cherry (although in the apartment of Clark, the building's founder, famously, some floors were inlaid with sterling silver).

Originally, the Dakota had sixty-five apartments with four to twenty rooms, no two being alike. These apartments are accessed by staircases and elevators placed in the four corners of the courtyard. Separate service stairs and elevators serving the kitchens are located in mid-block. Built to cater for the well-to-do, The Dakota featured many amenities and a modern infrastructure that was exceptional for the time. The building has a large dining hall; meals also could be sent up to the apartments by dumbwaiters. Electricity was generated by an in-house power plant and the building has central heating. Beside servant quarters, there was a playroom and a gymnasium under the roof. In later years, these spaces on the tenth floor were converted into apartments for economic reasons. The Dakota property also contained a garden, private croquet lawns, and a tennis court behind the building between 72nd and 73rd Streets.

The Dakota was a huge social success from the very start (all apartments were rented before the building opened), but it was a long-term drain on the fortune of Clark (who died before it was completed) and his heirs. For the high society of Manhattan, it became fashionable to live in the building, or at least to rent an apartment there as a secondary city residence, and The Dakota's success prompted the construction of many other luxury apartment buildings in Manhattan.

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In Nureyev trial, a portrait of the dancer's final year emerges - Rudolf Nureyev's estate - Brief Article | Dance Magazine | Find Articles at BNET

In Nureyev trial, a portrait of the dancer's final year emerges - Rudolf Nureyev's estate - Brief Article

by Paul Ben-Itzak

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NEW YORK CITY -- if it was unclear after the first day of trial in federal district court who would win the battle for Rudolf Nureyev's $7 million in New York assets -- the American foundation that bears his name or his sister and niece -- it was clear that the late ballet stars reputation would be tarnished by the testimony.

The Rudolf Nureyev Foundation, headed by the dancer's longtime attorney Barry Weinstein, is asking the court to affirm its right to proceeds from the sale of shares to Nureyev's Dakota apartment and the art collection and other objects in the home. The de facto defendants in the case are Nureyev's sister Roza and niece Gouzel, who have won a $2 million settlement from the European Nureyev foundation, in addition to $200,000 Nureyev willed to Roza and 50'000 to Gouzel.

"What they want," Gerald Rosenberg, the relatives' lawyer, told Judge Denny Chin in his opening statement November 3, "is their share of the $7 million."

While Rosenberg had not called his witnesses at press time, and they were not immediately available to comment, they have claimed the star was sick and feeble in his latter days. They say he was often confused, and that Weinstein exploited this to get Nureyev to set u

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