As Ms Kavanagh shows, Nureyev hit every contemporary button: communist repression v Western freedom, swinging London, the cult of youth, celebrity, fashion, sex (straight and gay) and finally, in a horrible coda, AIDS.
It began like this: In a #relevant interview with (relevant 30 years ago, maybe) Rolling Stone, Canadian mega-producer deadmau5 identified himself and a number of music festival contemporaries as "button-pushers," due, in no small part, to a job description that involves putting your hands in the air, occasionally throwing cakes at fans (mean-spiritedly, too, amrite?), and, well, pushing buttons.
This culture, beginning in the mid-1980s and still going strong, has provided the impetus for all-too-many university administrations to punish students, and even faculty, for expressing "offensive" thoughts in controversial areas, especially those touching race, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation and other hot-button contemporary topics.
We had our talk in a pleasantly cluttered study, and when we commented on the absence of push buttons and other contemporary gear, Mr. Gruen gave a ferocious growl.
"Buttoning up is contemporary but timeless".
Though the swearing-in was a re-enactment down to the antique buttons, there were contemporary political overtones.
Just out of rehearsal in a backstage lounge, Mr. Kartheiser, 34, looked perfectly contemporary in a dark cotton button-down shirt, jeans and expensive high-tops, full sideburns the only Darcyish touch.
Their emphasis on stories and characters involving iconic phenomena in cultural history and hot-button issues of contemporary sociology and politics grabbed — and still grabs — hold of journalists' nose for stories.
Despite so much of contemporary popular culture probing h0t-button social issues, there may be no television program that does it with such a fine-tuned hand.
Ishizu decided to target younger customers instead, but all the contemporary trends, whether aggressive Hollywood one-button jacket styles or V-shaped silhouettes from Europe, looked sinister on the backs of college students.
But it also pushes a number of buttons, which means that, by contemporary standards, it must be succeeding on some terms.
