Ballet: Nijinsky

John Neumeier’s ballet Nijinsky paints a powerful choreographic portrait of the legendary dancer Vaslav Nijinsky.

Through fragmentary memories, dream sequences, and historical moments from his life, the work opens a window into his inner world. Powerful choreography, music, and symbolic imagery combine to depict both Nijinsky’s artistic genius and his struggle with mental illness.

John Neumeier, one of the leading choreographers of our time, has long been inspired by Nijinsky – the artist and the man. He created a short ballet entitled Vaslav as early as 1979. In 2000, the 50^th anniversary of Nijinsky’s death, Neumeier once again created a choreographic study of this remarkable and mysterious individual in an evening-length ballet that received its world premiere with the Hamburg Ballet: “In creating a work about a historical person, what aspect should we concentrate on? Who was he truly: The man? The artist?”, asks the choreographer.

In Neumeier’s portrait in dance, the audience learns of a life caught between glittering fame and the depths of despair: Nijinsky is the revered star of the Ballets Russes and at the same time someone plagued by madness, doubt and fear. The “biography of a soul” is made up of a wealth of memories and sensations, associations and different realities.

Nijinsky again relives the high points of his success. His most legendary roles such as Harlequin, the Spirit of the Rose and the Golden Slave appear to be mirror images and are repeatedly punctured by moments from his childhood, with members of his family and from his career – ranging from his revolutionary choreographic visions such as L’Après-midi d’un faune and Le Sacre du Printemps to the passion of meeting his wife Romola and the pain of breaking with the Ballets Russes.

However, the glory slowly begins to diminish… Past and present, theatre and war, triumph and loss merge more and more into an inner vortex. In Nijinsky’s mind, he is not the one that has descended into madness – it is the world.

In his choice of music, Neumeier remains close to the artist Nijinsky as well as to historical and musical influences. To illuminate a formative layer of his life, the first part features – alongside a few chamber music miniatures — Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade. Hardly any other work embodies the magic of the early Ballets Russes more vividly. In the role of the Golden Slave, Nijinsky established his myth here even before he made dance history as the Spirit of the Rose or Petrushka. The second part of the ballet sets a deliberate contrast to this dazzling world: Dmitri Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 11 The Year 1905 recalls the brutally suppressed uprising in front of the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg. Thus, between sensuality and tragedy, an arc unfolds that makes the full tension of Nijinsky’s era musically tangible.

There is an artistic kinship between John Neumeier and Vaslav Nijinsky that has itself taken on a historical character. The Russian dancer and choreographer of the early 20th century has had a decisive influence on Neumeier’s work and aesthetic. In his apartment, Neumeier maintains a private Nijinsky museum – an expression of his deep admiration for the artist, whom he regards as the greatest visionary of ballet and, at the same time, its most tragic figure.

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(Source: wiener-staatsoper.at)