Nijinsky

Meanwhile Diaghilev had been making determined efforts to get Nijinsky released from internment in Europe, and finally, through the intervention of the King Of Spain he was allowed to join us in America. When I first met him in April, at the Metropolitan Opera House, he was quiet and reserved, obviously somewhat dazed by the strain of all he had gone through. But when I saw him dance, I was astounded at the way his whole personality became transformed on stage. He had an instinctive effortless control of his body; every gesture expressed the most tender and complex emotions. His movements were never broken off abruptly, but merged one into another to give a fluid continuity to his performance. Although I had identified myself with Petrouchka, I soon realized that the role came more naturally to Nijinsky. The nuances of his performances -- the jumps, the turns, the tilt of his head -- all combined to form a poignant representation of a puppet-like but recognizably human figure. The duality thus apparent in his dancing derived from his ability to invest his movements with an indefinable quality of self-revelation. Technically his dancing was incomparable. I remember seeing him in the Blue Bird pas de deux in The Sleeping Beauty. To convey the quivering motion of the bird's wings he fluttered his hands at such a dazzling speed that they seemed to have exactly the pulsating action of hummingbirds. I learned later that he had done this by doubling the rate of his wrist movements. His performance in Le Spectre de la Rose was unrivalled in its elevation, rhythmic precision and delicacy. In this romantic pas de deux, based on a poem by Theophile Gautier, he was the quintessence of the vision of the rose, the image of every young girl's dream. Dancing to Weber's beautiful 'Invitation to the Dance' he transformed himself into an ethereal creature, transporting the audience in imagination into the realm of lyric poetry. After seeing Nijinsky dance, I realized I had seen a genius.

My Life in Ballet by Leonide Massine. 1968. Pages 86-7.