Vaslav Nijinsky

The ballet dancer Vaslav Nijinsky (1890-1953) electrified his audiences with a virtuosity directly related to the characterizations he forged by the genius of his imagination. Although his dancing and choreographic career was short, he remains a symbol of human artistic achievement.

Vaslav Nijinsky was born in Kiev, Ukraine, on March 12, 1890 (some sources say 1888, others 1899). The Nijinsky children accompanied their Polishborn, academy-trained mother and father, Eleonora and Thomas, on the tours that featured their parents' character dances in Russian opera houses, concert halls, summer theaters, and circuses.

Vaslav's sister, Bronislava, younger by three years, had kept notes almost from the time she could write. She worked closely with Vaslav during the years he was the dazzling star of Diaghilev's Ballets Russes and she a member of the company (she was later to choreograph numerous distinguished ballets, among them Les Noces—1923—and Les Biches—1924). A brother, Stanislas, two years older than Vaslav, succumbed to mental illness in early adolescence.

In her book, Early Memoirs (1981), Bronislava describes the young Vaslav as lively, mischievous, and adventurous. He would stand on the knobs of a door and swing side to side with it, and could bounce just as high and forcefully as a rubber ball, and would sneak off to a nearby gypsy camp to enjoy and imitate the action he saw there.

Introduction to the Ballet

At the age of ten Vaslav was brought to the Imperial Ballet School in St. Petersburg by his parents. He was auditioned and accepted for both academic and ballet training. He was soon recognized as "remarkable" by his ballet teacher, N. Legat, although he was considered not very bright academically, except in geometry. Diaghilev's scenic artist, Alexandre Benois, in his Reminiscenses of the Russian Ballet writes of Nijinsky a few years later as being "a short, rather thick-set little fellow with the most ordinary colourless face."

In 1908 Vaslav was graduated from the Imperial School with honors and a few months later was partnering leading ballerinas on the stage of the Imperial Theatre in St. Petersburg. It was at this time that he met Sergei Diaghilev, 18 years his senior, and became his protegé and lover. In the summer of 1909 Diaghilev brought a group of Russian dancers to Paris for a brief season, with Vaslav dancing the lead roles in the Fokine ballets Pavillon d'Armide, Les Sylphides, Prince Igor, and Cleopatre. The response to the company was spectacular, the success of Nijinsky dazzling. Again on leave for a season in 1910, the troupe brought Scheherazade and Carnavalto Paris. The company with its brilliant music, decor, and dance was wildly acclaimed, and Nijinsky was adored. Back in St. Petersburg, Nijinsky was dismissed from the Imperial Theatre when he refused to wear trunks over his tights in an appearance with Tamara Karsavina in Giselle. Diaghilev then determined to set up a permanent company in the West.

From 1911 through 1913 the Diaghilev Ballets Russes was met with overwhelming enthusiasm throughout Europe. Nijinsky danced Le Spectre de la Rose and, encouraged by Diaghilev, made his first attempt at choreography with L'apres-midi d'un Faune. In 1913, still as lead dancer, he also choreographed Le Sacre du Printemps and Jeux, both controversial and breaking the molds of classic ballet. His dancing remained extraordinary. Marie Rambert, who worked with Nijinsky in the Jaques-Dalcroze method, made vital comment about his dancing in Quicksilver (1972): " … One is often asked whether his jump was really as high as it is always described. To that I answer: I don't know how far from the ground it was, but I know it was near the stars. Who would watch the floor when he danced? He transported you at once into higher spheres with the sheer ecstacy of his flight."

Marriage Brings Dismissal from Ballets Russes

Sergei Diaghilev had a fierce fear of the sea and when later in 1913 the company left for a tour of South America he did not accompany it. On the boat trip Nijinsky became interested in a young Hungarian heiress, Romola, who was in the corps de ballet, and when they landed in Buenos Aires they were married.

Upon receiving the news of the marriage Diaghilev cabled Vaslav Nijinsky to inform him that he was dismissed from the company. Severed from his personal and professional ties with the ballet, the importance of Nijinsky as dancer and choreographer went into decline.

While he was active as a ballet dancer he electrified his audiences with protean performances and a virtuosity that was never exhibitionistic, but always related to the characterizations he forged by the genius of his creative imagination. As choreographer, also briefly, he provided a daring and exotic breakthrough into the 20th century.

His dancing was seen by relatively few audiences during the brief nine years of his professional dance activity, and there are no moving pictures of him. But there are photographs, and they are telling. Is it the same dancer who looks so unreal in The Spectre of the Rose, that grovels as the straw puppet in Petrouchka, that portrays the patrician Albrecht of Giselle and the sensuous harem slave of Scheherazade, the earthy Greek sculpture-come-to-life in Afternoon of a Faun? Each has a different weight, stance, movement, style.

Edwin Denby conveyed his keen observations of accents, counterforces, and relationships of body parts and assists us in seeing the nuance of the artist's superb gift of communication in his Notes on Nijinsky Photographs, which first appeared in an illustrated monograph edited by Paul Magriel (1946).

Mental Illness Ends Professional Life

In the spring of 1914 Nijinsky made an unsuccessful attempt to start his own company, and signs of mental illness began to appear. From 1914 to 1916 he was interred as a civilian prisoner of war in Austro-Hungary, his wife's country. In 1916 he rejoined the Diaghilev company and went with it to the United States with only tepid success. He tried another tour soon after with his own company, choreographing and dancing the lead role of Til Eulgenspiegel. There was still another brief tour in South America. Then came the end of his professional life.

He and Romola went to Switzerland, and for the next decade there was constant shifting from one clinic to another in the hope of finding a cure. Attempts to bring back his memory and interest in ballet were also futile. For the more than half of his life that remained—he died at the age of 60—his mind and body were engulfed by a mental disease identified as schizophrenia. There was not a day of respite.

Romola Nijinsky's Life of Nijinsky, assisted by Lincoln Kirstein (1933), blames much on Diaghilev. Kirstein, who had never seen Nijinsky dance, was inspired by the photos. It was with Romola Nijinsky's help that he met George Balanchine, who then arranged to bring him to the United States. There was much scandal and controversy over the homosexual relationship with Diaghilev. Was it a Svengali situation? Was it that the artist needed the support of the sponsor? Would there have been no breakdown had there been no break with Diaghilev?

The Diary of Vaslav Nijinsky (1968), edited by Romola Nijinsky, includes drawings made during the years in mental institutions and has painful-to-read recitations of what is called "Reflections on Life, Death, and Feelings" in which Vaslav identifies himself with God and calls out for peace and love.

Vaslav Nijinsky died in 1953 and is buried in Paris. Romola died in 1978. Daughter Kyra Nijinsky, born in 1914, painted many dance portraits of Vaslav, although she never saw her father dance. Daughter Tamara, born in 1920, worked with puppets.

Further Reading

Most of what we know about Nijinsky comes from the vast literature, diverse and often controversial, that perpetuates the legend of his greatness. Some of this was written by those who knew him, much by those who never saw him dance but fell in love with the legend and were inspired to investigate and share their discoveries. Nijinsky by Vera Krasovskaya (1974) includes additional background information with emphasis on the Russian elements of the dancer's life and training. Nijinsky by Richard Buckle (1971) provides a comprehensive account of casts, dates, descriptions, and details of negotiations based on definitive research and information from those who worked closely with him. The Denby essay is reprinted in the outsize Nijinsky Dancing, a compilation of over 100 photographs with brilliant text and commentary by Lincoln Kirstein (1975).

Additional Sources

Buckle, Richard., Nijinsky, Harmondsworth etc.: Penguin, 1975.

Nijinsky, New York: Schirmer books, 1979.

Nijinsky, Romola de Pulszky., Nijinsky and The last years of Nijinsky, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1980.

Ostwald, Peter F., Vaslav Nijinsky: a leap into madness, Secaucus, NJ: Carol Pub. Group, 1996.

Parker, Derek., Nijinsky: god of the dance, Wellingborough, Northamptonshire, England: Equation; New York, N.Y.: Distributed by Sterling Pub. Co., 1988. □

NIJINSKY, VASLAV

NIJINSKY, VASLAV (1890–1950), Russian dancer.

Born in Kiev on 12 March (28 February, old style) 1890 on a tour of his dancer-parents Eleonora Bereda and Thomas Nijinsky, Vaslav Fomich Nijinsky entered the St. Petersburg Imperial Ballet School in 1898, graduating from there in 1907. That same year he joined the Maryinsky Theater, where he had already appeared as a pupil in Michel Fokine's Acis et Galatée (1905), in A Midsummer Night's Dream (1906), and with Anna Pavlova in Fokine's Pavillon d'Armide (1907). A sensational success, he soon became the partner of Mathilde Kschessinska, Olga Preobrajenska, and Tamara Karsavina. He was befriended by Sergei Diaghilev, who saw in the young dancer not only a potential lover but also someone to star in the Paris seasons of the Ballets Russes.

With the Ballets Russes he was idolized for his performances in the classics and in Fokine's Les Sylphides and Cleopatra (1909), Carnaval and Schéhérazade (1910), and Le Spectre de la rose, Narcisse, and Petrushka (1911). Audiences went wild for his amazing virtuosity (he had exceptional elevation, executing entrechats huit and dix); he could be savagely sexual as the Golden Slave in Schéhérazade, or dreamily romantic as the spirit in Spectre de la rose. The costume he wore for Giselle

at the Maryinsky Theater was considered indecent, and the ensuing scandal (which some claimed Diaghilev masterminded) made him resign from the Maryinsky in 1911.

Now free to devote his energies to Diaghilev full-time, Nijinsky became not only the main attraction of the Ballets Russes but also their choreographer. Diaghilev had established his company as a permanent touring ensemble for which he urged Nijinsky to create innovative works. The resulting ballets were among the most controversial in the entire history of ballet and are considered to foreshadow the many developments of later avant-garde choreography. His choreography was a revolutionary break with tradition in, for example, L'Après-midi d'un faune (1912), Jeux (1913), and Le Sacre du Printemps (1913). Like Fokine's, his movements were molded to reflect the different settings: in L'Après-midi d'un faune steps were seen in profile like Greek friezes, and inLe Sacre du Printemps the language of the body was turned in on itself when the dance became flat-footed and convulsive. The brazen modernity of his ballets, and the overt eroticism of Faune, provoked strong reactions from audiences and notorious riots in the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées.

While on tour in South America in 1913, Nijinsky married the Hungarian dancer Romola de Pulszky, an act that so infuriated Diaghilev that he fired Nijinsky. The break between Nijinsky and his older impresario-lover marked the beginning of Nijinsky's decline into mental illness. He tried to establish a company of his own in 1914, but it failed after only sixteen days at the Palace Theatre in London. He went to Madrid and Vienna, where his daughter Kyra Nijinsky was born (she became a dancer and the wife of the conductor Igor Markevitch), then to Budapest, where he was interned as a Russian during World War I. Diaghilev succeeded in getting him out of Hungary for a North American tour with the Ballets Russes in 1916, for which Nijinsky choreographed Richard Strauss's Till Eulenspiegel. During a subsequent tour of South America he showed increasing signs of schizophrenia. He settled in St.-Moritz in Switzerland in 1918 and entered a sanatorium the following year.

Nijinsky's last public performance, a solo recital called Marriage with God, was given on January 1919 in a St.-Moritz hotel ballroom. Nijinsky worked on a system of dance notation, worked on plans for a ballet school, designed new ballets, and started to draw while moving from one mental hospital to another. In 1947 his family moved to London where Nijinsky died of renal failure on 8 April 1950. His body was taken to Paris and buried in the Montmartre Cemetery.

Nijinsky was one of the greatest artists ballet has ever produced, a dancer of exceptional ability and magnetism. As a choreographer he had a decisive influence on early modern dance and is now considered one of the forerunners of twentieth-century modernism. Herbert Ross made a film about his life in 1980, while Maurice Béjart choreographed a ballet about him, Nijinsky, clown de Dieu (Nijinsky, clown of God). The Diary of Vaslav Nijinsky, written over a six-week period in 1919, was published in English in 1936 in a version

heavily edited by Romola Nijinsky. The unexpurgated version, edited by Joan Acocella, was published in 1999.

See alsoAvant-Garde; Body; Diaghilev, Sergei; Homosexuality and Lesbianism; Paris; Pavlova, Anna.

bibliography

Buckle, Richard. Nijinsky. New York, 1971.

Garafola, Lynn. Diaghilev's Ballets Russes. New York, 1989.

Kirstein, Lincoln. Nijinsky Dancing. New York, 1975.

Ostwald, Peter. Vaslav Nijinsky: A Leap into Madness. London, 1991.

Philip T. A. Johnston

Nijinsky, Vaslav (1890–1950) Russian dancer, often regarded as the greatest male ballet dancer of the 20th century. Dancing with the Ballets Russes, his most noted roles were in Petrushka, Les Sylphides, and Scheherazade. From 1912, Nijinsky choreographed such ballets as L'Après-midi d'un faune, Jeux, Le Sacre du printemps for Diaghilev, and Stravinsky's The Rites of Spring (1913), the last of which outraged Parisian audiences.