Istvan Rabovsky
Half of a stellar Hungarian husband and wife ballet partnership dubbed ‘the Iron Curtain defectors’
ISTVAN RABOVSKY, the Hungarian ballet-dancer, who has died in Manhattan aged 90, leapt into history – with his ballerina wife, Nora Kovach – in May 1953 as the first “Iron Curtain defectors”, causing worldwide headlines and the arrest of the Hungarian president’s brother-in-law.
Aged 23 and 21, the brilliant young stars of the Budapest State Ballet, as laureates of Hungary’s top arts prize, were due to perform in East Berlin for Soviet officials, a trip sanctioned by a central propaganda official related to President Rakosi.
Instead of taking the metro to the theatre, however, they boarded one in the opposite direction, and thanks to an indolent conductor who failed to check their papers, they walked into the free British sector just as they were due to step on to the stage in East Berlin.
Three months later they made their Western debut with Festival Ballet and the Roland Petit Ballets de Paris in London, and by November were in New York, appearing on Ed Sullivan’s Talk of the Town television show to tell their sensational story.
Istvan Rabovsky and Nora Kovach’s defection was a sensational Western propaganda coup, and was rapidly the subject of, first, a State Department television documentary, Dance to Freedom, which aired in Alistair Cooke’s 1954 Omnibus strand, and a joint memoir in 1956, Leap Through the Curtain, with George Mikes.
Nora Kovach told how she had put on two sets of underwear with her jewellery inside, and they only knew they were out of the Soviet sector when they saw oranges and bananas on a barrow by the station exit.
While Nora Kovach was loved for her beauty and impish spirit, Istvan Rabovsky astounded audiences with his powerful jumps and agility, but would suffer from criticism that his athleticism was somewhat rough by comparison with his wife’s grace. In their book he struck back: “I feel that no real dancer can be reproached for being able to leap like an athlete.”
In July 1956 the couple had another headlining escape when they were passengers on the Italian liner Andrea Doria, which sank off New England after colliding with a Swedish liner. All but five of the 1,700 aboard were rescued, but Kovach and Rabovsky considered themselves fortunate that they had switched cabin, for the occupant of their first selection was among the casualties.
Istvan Rab (Rabovsky was his professional name) was born on March 31 1930 in Szeged, Hungary, into a poor peasant family. At the Budapest ballet school, aged 13, he met the 12-year-old Nora Kovach, and the pair would sneak out of performances to kiss backstage.
They were so talented, however, that the Bolshoi ballerina Galina Ulanova arranged them six months’ training in Leningrad, where they performed solos in Kirov Ballet performances. On their return to Budapest they were given highest rank in the Hungarian state ballet.
While Kovach’s mother thought Rabovsky a peasant unworthy of her daughter, he slipped an engagement ring on to Kovach’s finger during a performance of Swan Lake, and they married in October 1952. Soon after, the pair were awarded Hungary’s Kossuth Prize, as a result of which they found themselves on a privileged trip to Berlin, and their chance to escape.
While the couple quickly won appeal as unique exemplars of Soviet ballet virtuosity, once the Bolshoi Ballet debuted in the West in the mid-1950s – and still more after Nureyev’s defection – interest in the first Communist ballet stars waned. They contented themselves with a well-rewarded niche performing classical numbers on Radio City Music Hall programmes, and guested on Judy Garland’s variety show.
In 1963 the pair astutely returned to their roots with the creation of Hungarian Ballets Bihari, later Ballet Zigani, combining folk dance and ballet, with gypsy musicians and an orchestra of Hungarian émigrés, the Philharmonica Hungarica.
An admiring review of a Carnegie Hall appearance found Rabovsky to be “a lean pillar of muscle, displaying complete control … he and Miss Kovach were a breathtaking embodiment of masculine strength and feminine grace.”
The leading New York critic Clive Barnes lamented that such quality dancers spent their peak years dancing hackneyed extracts from 19th-century classical ballets, trading on sensational, but immature, technique.
He remarked that they had become “victims of their own news value … In their early days in the West they almost seemed to be the agents of their own exploitation.”
But their Hungarian-flavoured Ballet Zigani at the Latin Quarter nightclub on Times Square, thought Barnes, was “an act of quite remarkable zing. Ballet’s loss is the Latin Quarter’s gain,” he concluded.
Though the couple divorced in 1962, they performed together until 1970. “They get along much better now, no more the fights – they even dance better,” commented their manager Sonja Loew.
Remarried, with two daughters, Rabovsky taught at his ex-wife’s dance school on Long Island (Nora Kovach died in 2009). He was then Dance Theatre of Harlem‘s ballet teacher and coach for 15 years.
Istvan Rabovsky is survived by his wife, Candace Itow, formerly a New York City Opera dancer, and his daughters Lisa Rabbe and Emese Camanelli.
Istvan Rabovsky, born March 31 1930, died August 18 2020