Nijinsky and the Ballets Russes in 1916

H. T. Parker claimed that the Russians looked like a different company. In this judgement he included Lydia [Lopokova], observing how the ‘white sparks’ of Nijinsky’s dancing were kindling her to still greater brilliance. Nevertheless, Lydia’s own assessment of their partnership remained doubtful. With Massine in Europe she was dancing even more regularly with Nijinsky, to Sylphides, Spectre and Carnaval, and her performances were affected not only by their uncertain stage chemistry, but by her partner’s tendency to take extreme, unscheduled risks. Many dancers use the adrenalin of a live performance to push themselves to new levels of technique or expression, but Nijinsky went further than most in abandoning timings that had been set in rehearsal, and forcing lifts and balances to unstable limits.* While thrilling for an audience, these unpremeditated variations could be disconcerting for his ballerina, and most disturbing to Lydia may have been her suspicion that Nijinsky was deliberately contriving to undermine her. Several journalists noticed that an ungallant spirit of rivalry galvanised Nijinsky when he partnered her, and complaints were printed about his ill-mannered treatment of her during curtain calls.


After the Ballets Russes left New York, winding its way down the eastern coast to Houston and up through the Midwest, Lydia's colleagues also had reason to feel renewed concern. Nijinsky's mood began to fluctuate so that while he was sometimes clumsily eager to ingratiate himself with the other dancers, playing schoolboy pranks and offering them puppyish endearments, at other times he withdrew completely, his slanted gaze unreadable, his behaviour a baffling blank. On one occasion he seemed almost mad. The company were advertised to dance Sylphides, for which the dancers, probably including Lydia, were all dressed in their appropriate costumes, but shortly before the curtain was due to rise, Nijinsky suddenly announced that he would prefer to dance Carnaval. A panicking Randolfo locked Nijinsky in his dressing room with only his wig and costume for Sylphides, and when the star finally emerged, wearing the correct costume he simply went on stage to dance the advertised ballet as if nothing had happened.


It may have been the pressure of his new duties that was making Nijinsky act so erratically, or, as some dancers would later suspect, he was exhibiting early symptoms of the mental illness that would incapacitate him in 1919.



*Sokolova was also partnered by Nijinsky and recalled that his habit of taking his supporting hand away in the middle of an arabesque or throwing her unexpectedly in a lift was ‘very frightening’.


Bloomsbury Ballerina: Lydia Lopokova by Judith Mackrell. 2008. Pages 113-4.