The tragic side of Nijinsky's immortality

But there is another side to Nijinsky's immortality, a tragic one.  This man will never die because he never lived.  From infancy on, his life was hemmed in by impediments.  Some of these he tried to leap over -- his father's abandonment, his mother's poverty, the exploitation of talent that is so often found in institutions, schools, and companies where artists work.  When he was young and supple, he had a phenomenal track record.  He danced all the great roles and created new ones.  He achieved stardom in only a few years.  He found love in the arms of men and women.  He became world famous.  Yet certain barriers Nijinsky could never surmount -- the depressiveness in his family, the isolative, malignant qualities in his own personality, and the psychosis that he shared with his brother.  As long as he was in the theater and pretending to be a slave, clown, lover, specter, puppet, half-animal, or whatever role he was dancing, the inner disturbances of mood could be kept under control.  Offstage, however, he remained childlike, helpless, and insecure, with but a single interest -- the art of ballet -- to give any meaning to his life.

Most of his relationships with people were grossly impaired by an irritable, tempestuous explosiveness.  Outbursts of rage would disrupt his sweet, affectionate, and childlike appeal.  Lovers could tolerate him only when there a a definite payoff -- sexual favors for Prince Lvov, dancing for Diaghilev, self-aggrandizement for Romola.  Handicapped by his utter perfectionism and a tendency to want to do everything in his own way, he finally became completely unsociable, an eccentric recluse.  Most of his ballets remained unfinished -- what a terrible loss.  Think of the marvelous things Nijinksy might have done with Mephisto Waltz, the Bach ballet, Papillons de la Nuit, or the improvisatory Dance of Life Against Death.  If only he had been able to work well with others and win the kind of support a man of genius needs.  The behavior of an artist may seem eccentric at times, but to succeed in the theater it is necessary to maintain a certain amount of sociability and be conciliatory.  A certain craftiness may also help, if one hopes to be a leader, to run a company, to form a school.  One must be able to bend to the will of others, and also know how to manipulate them.  These were qualities that Diaghilev and Romola Pulszky possessed.  But not Nijinsky.


Vaslav Nijinsky: A Leap into Madness by Peter Ostwald. 1991. Pages 339-40.

Nijinsky's Faune

. . . towards the end of April 1912, Nijinsky had finished his Faune.  The preparation had taken ninety rehearsals -- which may seem a lot for a ten-minute ballet.  Yet the number of rehearsals was not excessive if one takes into account the ballet's completely new technique of presentation, and if one also remembers the marvelous level of execution finally achieved by the artists.

It was the first time that a ballet had been mounted and rehearsed in the same way that a musical score is performed by an orchestra.  In this new technique Nijinsky truly demonstrated his choreographic genius: he conducted his ballet, seeing each choreographic detail in the same way that the conductor of an orchestra hears each note in a musical score.

Up to then the ballet artist had been free to project his own individuality as he felt; he was even expected to embellish it according to his own taste, possibly neglecting the exactness of the choreographic execution.  The artists simply had to comply with the following rules; keep a line straight or a circle round; preserve the groupings; execute the basic pas.

Nijinsky was the first to demand that his whole choreographic material should be executed not only exactly as he saw it but also according to his artistic interpretation.  Never was a ballet performed with such musical and choreographic exactness as L'Après-Midi d'un Faune.  Each position of the dance, each position of the body down to the gesture of each finger, was mounted according to a strict choreographic plan.

Bonislava Nijinska: Early Memoirs.  1981.  Page 427.

Karsavina describes lessons in pantomime

Twice a week Guerdt gave us lessons in pantomime.  He taught us by his own example.  He first acted a scene himself, and then let us repeat it, correcting us as we did it.  We acted scenes from actual ballets in the repertoire and from the old ones that lived in the memory of our master through either the glory of their interpreters or because these scenes offered an opportunity of a highly dramatic or of a comic situation.  Few, if any, accessories were used.  The main features of the scenery were easily supplied by benches and chairs.  Two chairs with a space between would represent a door; a bench would be placed to be a couch, if absolutely required by the situation.  As for properties, they were imaginary.  We poured wine, plucked flowers, stabbed, span, knocked at the door -- all without accessories.  The movements necessary for these simple actions were to my mind the most difficult to find, the dramatic ones easy enough.  We were constantly corrected by the master.  "You don't write a letter by simply wobbling your hand.  Press, form the characters."  Or, "That is not the way to hold a rose."  Out of his pocket would come a handkerchief.  Folding it in imitation of a flower, he gazed lovingly at the piece of cambric, and rapturously inhaled the imaginary fragrance.  No theoretical explanation, no attempt to define a law determining the means of expression were given to us.  A purely intuitive actor, Guerdt was hardly conscious himself of the two quite different elements of the present ballet acting.  Mimed narrative had by now established itself firmly.  A scene acted in a past tense, in which the actor had to explain what took place off the stage, necessarily called for description or entirely conventional gestures.  In other ballets such as Giselle, La fille mal gardée, the action came spontaneously from the core of the plot.  It unfolded itself from the situation by means of emotional gestures or acts direct to the purpose.

Pantomime lessons as given by Guerdt were an admirable example, but not a teaching based on any clearly understood principle.  I think that consideration must have been in Wolkonsky's mind when he, frequently present at our lessons, set us some problems to work out.  The little plots he gave us were simple and circumstantial.  From a skeleton of a plot we had to imagine the situation and devise the action.  Without an example before us we often failed.  Here Wolkonsky would prompt us by suggestions:  "You see the villain going off the stage; his malignant smile convinces you of his villainy.  Turning to your mother you say -- 'it is him that has stolen my letter' -- how will you do that?  Look at the person you are addressing and point to one of whom you speak.  In a gesture of accusation, the palm of your hand must be turned down.  The contrary will imply invitation, demand, address."  By these remarks he made us depend on the understanding of a principle of acting and not merely on copying a demonstrated exercise.

Theatre Street: The Reminiscences of Tamara Karsavina. 1930. Page 113-4.

An aspect of production -- Giselle

It is not easy to arrange these two cottages so that the gamekeeper, Hilarion, can spy upon Albrecht and his squire going to the former's cottage, while remaining in concealment unseen either by them or by Giselle, should she chance to look out of the window of her abode.  Quite often, when the stage is small, Loys's cottage is omitted altogether, which must make the subsequent proceedings quite incomprehensible to anyone seeing the ballet for the first time.

It cannot be over-emphasised that the entire understanding of Act I depends upon the manner in which the episode of Hilarion's spying upon Loys is presented.  When the peasant girls have crossed in little groups from one side of the stage to the other, the scene is momentarily empty.  Then Hilarion enters and peers about him as if in search of someone.  He gazes at Giselle's cottage with tenderness and at its neighbour with anger.  Albrecht approaches, richly dressed, accompanied by his squire, Wilfrid.  They enter the hut to the right.  Hilarion, his suspicions aroused, hides and watches.  Presently, Wilfrid emerges and is seen conversing with Albrecht, now dressed as the peasant, Loys.  The former seems to be urging the latter to abandon some project.  He is dismissed, but bows low before taking his departure.  Hilarion, not unnaturally, is puzzled that so well-dressed a youth should pay homage to a peasant.  Few producers realise how vital is this incident to the understanding of the subsequent action, yet it is frequently regarded as a mere preamble to the ballet and presented so carelessly, that it either passes unnoticed or produces but the most fleeting impression.

The whole purpose of this short scene is to inform the audience that Loys, although dressed as a peasant, is really a nobleman in disguise.

The Ballet Called Giselle by Cyril W. Beaumount.1969.  Page 103-4.

Nijinsky and Diaghilev -- 1913

With Le Sacre du Printemps ballet crossed the threshold of modernism.  Yet Diaghilev, having expended untold sums and vast human resources, drew back from the revolution he had set in motion.  As early as the summer of 1913, Nijinska writes, Diaghilev appeared "disenchanted with Nijinsky's talent and disappointed in him as a choreographer."  That is, even before Nijinsky's departure for South America and his marriage to Romola de Pulszky, Diaghilev "had made it clear. . . that he did not want to entrust him with the choreography of any new ballets."  Indeed, the telegram dismissing him from the Ballets Russes reached the dancer even as word sped around St. Petersburg that Diaghilev and Fokine had reached complete agreement regarding the latter's participation in the 1914 season.  With their rapprochement, Nijinsky's position within the company became untenable.

Diaghilev's Ballets Russes by Lynn Garafola.  1989.  Page 73.

The Victorian Ballet-Girl in London

The Ballet-girl's day was a long one.  It began with a rehearsal at ten or eleven o'clock in the morning on a bare, uninviting stage with the flats and the wings drawn away and a few rays of sunshine penetrating the mass of ropes, pulleys and bridges in the flies.  To the accompaniment of a solitary violinist, the Ballet-master drilled the dancers, 'pretty trim-built girls, with sallow faces and large eyes -- the pallor that overspreads their features from cosmetics and late hours'.  Perhaps there was a general rehearsal, with orchestra and scenery, to follow.  Practice-costume was by no means the rule in those days of long, wide skirts.  'It is curious to see them rehearsing their grand pas in their walking dresses.  they divest themselves of their bonnets and shawls; and sometimes tie a handkerchief, gipsy fashion, over their heads.  Then they begin -- sinking down and crossing their hands on their breast; bending back almost to vertebral dislocation; wreathing their arms; and the like. . . .  You will observe, too, that they have all kept their gloves on: it appears to be a point of etiquette amongst them to do so.'

After the rehearsal, the Ballet-girl had two or three hours to herself before returning to the theatre by six o'clock to prepare for the evening performance.  With a nod to the stage-door keeper and a quick glance at the letter-rack, she ran up the stairway to the dressing-room, which she shared with five other girls, and where she had a compartment to herself on one of the dressing-tables, with her own looking-glass and wash-basin, powder-dabbers and pots of rouge.  When the call-boy's voice was heard through the door, there was a hurried rush to take up their positions.  Some climbed the staircase to be attached to the hooks of the 'travellers', some descended below the stage to make their entrances through trap-doors, some collected in groups in the wings, while others, not required until the next act, made their way leisurely to the Green Room.

Usually they were all dressed exactly alike, but if one were singled out to wear some additional decoration on her costume, or to perform slightly different steps, with what rapture was this mark of favour received!  For it was a sign of progress in a career that was a ceaseless struggle.  'If the management permits her to wear a wreath of her own purchasing whilst her sister fays go without one, she has achieved another great position, and dreams of one day equalling Carlotta Grisi.  For upon enquiry you will find that Carlotta is the real pet of the ballet.'

Between the acts, there was a great flurry and bustling, a swarm of scene-shifters coming on with the wings and the flats for the next scene, the stage-manager giving his last-minute instructions ('with the addition of a little swearing'), the property-man busily seeing that all was in order, and a few privileged well-dressed gentlemen lounging in the wings and flirting with the coryphées.

When the performance was over, if no watchful mother or attentive sweetheart was waiting for her, the Ballet-girl stole quietly out of the stage-door and, her shawl drawn closely about her, made her way quickly homeward, stopping perhaps at the late shop for a bottle of ginger beer and one of those tempting pies that lay steaming in the open window.  And once home, she undressed quickly and climbed into her bed, for the day had been long and exacting and there was another rehearsal the next morning.  'With the music, the stage, and the lights still haunting her senses, she falls asleep; and perhaps dreams that she is a second Taglioni, and that foreign gentlemen, the likes of which have never been seen in Leicester Square, are dragging her from the theatre to the hotel, in her own carriage.'

Victorian Ballet Girl: the Tragic Story of Clara Webster by Ivor Guest.  1957.  Pages 35-7. [With quotes from Albert Smith's The Natural History of the Ballet-Girl. 1847.]

A memory of Le Spectre de la Rose with Nijinsky and Karsavina

As I have already said, my sister, four years my senior, was with me.  She had come to the capital partly to see me, partly to visit family friends, who were entertaining her with all the lavishness of Russians of position in the Imperial régime.  It was through one of these friends that the tickets for the special performance of Le Spectre de la Rose came -- and we were asked if we would care to go to it.  My sister's hostess and her husband apparently did not wish to see Fokine's work -- they said something about not liking new-fangled things, which I did not understand.

Of course we accepted joyously.  It was the accepted thing that if one was in Petersburg one missed no possible opportunity of seeing the ballet -- especially when one normally lived, as my sister and I did, in an inaccessible province in the far south.  I could not understand why anyone should decline to go; it was like refusing cream cakes or those delicious sugar candies that were sold in the wonderful shops on the Nevsky Prospekt.  That was the childish thought that sprang to my mind, and I remember it with astonishing clarity.  It is an indication of my boyish normality and of my utter immaturity.

The performance was given in a small semi-private theatre, which a rich landowner had built for his own amusement, and began with some divertissement that I cannot recall, beyond that it was of the type I had seen even at my age, a hundred times before.  And then at last came Le Spectre de la Rose.  The small orchestra played the opening bars of Weber's Invitation to the Waltz, a piece that was unknown to me though it was famous all over Europe.  The curtains slid back.

As though drawn by some magnetic force, I leant forward and glued my eyes to the stage.  Bakst's décor fascinated me.  The tall window with its lace curtains tied back with ribbons, the canary in its cage, the furniture that was like nothing I had ever seen before and looked as though it had come from some other, remote world -- all this was a miracle, and I experienced an odd feeling of fear that the curtains might close and I should never see it again.

But fear vanished, even the décor grew dim, when Karsavina appeared, the rose in her hand.  It was impossible to believe that she was flesh-and-blood.  She was a feather, and the stage was there not to support her but to limit her movement so that the audience could see her.  I do not pretend that I knew what she was trying to express -- or, rather, was expressing with the utmost conviction to older and more formed minds; I knew nothing at my age of the poignancy of a young girl returning from a ball bewildered by her first encounter with love and gallantry, of which the rose she carried was a souvenir.  That did not matter.  Karsavina danced as I had seen no one dance before.  I was enthralled, absorbed, barely aware of myself any longer.

She sank into the chair and fell asleep.  My trance was momentarily over and I wanted to cry out and tell her that she must never, never stop dancing . . . but already I was too well schooled in the discipline of the ballet.  I waited, expectant, eager.

For what seemed to me eternity, the stage was occupied by none but the sleeping Karsavina.  Then, magically, Nijinsky was there.  He had entered by that famous leap which caused so much controversy and was opposed by some on the grounds of "athleticism in the ballet" so that, for a time, the superbness of Karsavina and the glory of the ballet as a whole were forgotten, and people went to see Le Spectre de la Rose for the leap alone.

I could add nothing to that discussion if I wished to stir again the old embers, which I do not.  No doubt, as a boy, I should have remembered that before all else.  But I was barely conscious of it.  All I knew was that Nijinsky was on the stage, wafted there by some magical aid that had nothing to do with everyday human muscles.  Nijinsky danced, as lightly as Karsavina, yet differently.  This time, perhaps because of his costume of rose petals, I had no difficulty in following the book.  He was the rose itself come to life and dancing just like fallen rose petals dance when the soft summer breeze lifts them into the air.

Before I had been entranced.  Now I was bewitched.  My whole world was that small stage on which spirits moved.  Karsavina awoke and joined the spirit of the Rose.  The pain of my delight was almost unbearable.  And at last Nijinsky left.  Out of a memory more than forty years' old, a memory based on a child's experience, I defy all the books and all the critics.  He did not leap.  He was wafted out of that open window by a zephyr.  Since that time, in Italy, in France, in English gardens, in a hundred places where roses grow, I have seen petals caught by a small eddy of wind and gently borne aloft out of sight; and never have I failed to think of Nijinsky and the Spirit of the Rose.  If others assert that Nijinsky leapt, then for them, to their eyes, he did; but for me, the middle-aged man who looks back on it through the eyes of a small boy, Nijinsky was puffed away by the slightest, most caressing of winds.

Charm of Ballet by George Borodin [George Sava]. 1955.  Pages 30-2.

The self-sacrifice of dancers

As long as we continue to regard dancers as special beings, a breed apart, we condemn them to the status quo -- to their eternal childhood.  If we insist on their childlike charm and innocence at the expense of an adult relationship to the world of work, love, family, and friendship, it is they who will pay for our pleasure.  And as long as dancers accept this self-image, forfeiting the rights most professionals fight for and enjoy -- the right to respect, to financial remuneration, and to have at least some outside fulfillment -- the price they pay will be inordinately high.

In Europe, dancers fare better because ballet is forced to play by society's rules.  Ballet may create a magical world on stage, but dancers know that there is nothing magical about low pay and poor working conditions, sacrifice and injury.  They've learned how to fight to protect themselves.  There are some American dancers who have also learned that lesson.  They are the superstars who insist upon high salaries, a measure of control over their working lives, a great deal of security, and even more respect.  The difference between Europe and America is that across the Atlantic star dancers are not singled out:  When dancers are truly protected, all are protected equally.

Off Balance: the Real World of Ballet by Suzanne Gordon.  1983.  Page 215.

The power of Mathilde Kschessinska

 On April 15th I appeared in the other ballet I had inherited from Legnani, La Camargo, a work in three acts and five tableaux in Louis XV style, by Saint-Georges and Petipa.  It was responsible for another clash between Prince Volkhonsky, Director of the Imperial Theatres, and myself.  Legnani had performed the Russian dance in a Louis XV style costume, whose billowing skirts, supported by hoop petticoats, hindered her movements and robbed the dance of all its charm.  Legnani was certainly an excellent dancer, but she paid far less attention to costume than I did.  I knew perfectly well that in these clothes I would look ugly, on account of my small size, and that I would also find it quite impossible to execute the Russian dance in the way I wished to do it.  It consists of imperceptibly subtle touches, which contribute its value.  I had therefore given my reasons to the wardrobe-keeper, adding that I would naturally put on the presribed costume, but without the tiresome hoops, whose absence would anyway not be noticed under the billowing skirts.  My remarks, wholly justified as they were, were doubtless misrepresented to the Director to appear a mere whim.  In any case, my observations were disregarded and I was again told that I must put on the hoops without fail.  I then received the impression that someone was trying to pick a quarrel with me on a trifling excuse.

Just before the performance began Baron Koussov, Theatre Manager in the Imperial Theatres, entered my dressing-room and insisted once more in the Director's name that I should put on the hoops.  The disagreement had now gone on for some time, and the public, who knew all about it, was impatiently waiting the outcome of  "the affair".  The outcome was that I categorically refused to put on the hoops and danced without them!  If it had not been for the publicity given to the quarrel, nobody could ever have known if I was wearing the hoops or not.

The next day when I arrived at the theatre for rehearsal I read on the Administration's notice board: "The Director of the Imperial Theatres fines the ballerina Kschessinska [so many rubles] for an unauthorised change in the costume prescribed by regulation for the ballet La Camargo".  Bearing in mind my salary and position, the fine was so small that it was clearly meant to provoke and not to punish me.  I could not submit to such an insult without taking steps to put it right.  I had no other resource but to apply once more to the Tsar, begging him to have the fine remitted through the same channel.  And now a notice went up on the board:  "The Director of the Imperial Theatres hereby orders a remission of the fine imposed on the ballerina Kschessinska for an unauthorised change in the costume prescribed by regulation in the ballet La Camargo."  Following this incident, Prince Volkhonsky felt that he should not remain at his post and handed in his resignation  However, his prestige and independence did not suffer as a result..  He left in July 1901 and was succeeded by V. A. Teliakovsky.

Dancing in Petersburg: the Memoirs of Mathilde Kschessinska. 2005. Pages 81-2.