Vaslav Nijinsky

Nijinsky and Nijinski are redirects to this article. Further meanings are listed under Nijinsky (disambiguation) .

Nijinsky as the wind god Vayu in Marius Petipa's ballet Der Talisman , around 1910

Vaslav Nijinsky ( French transcription , in original Polish spelling Wacław Nizynski, Russian Вацлав Фомич Нижинский / Wazlaw Fomitch Nischinski, also Vaclav Nijinsky or Vatslav Nizhinskiy transcribed; born December 16, ^jul. / 28. December  1889 ^greg. 12 according to other sources in March 1888 or 1889 or 1890 in Kiev ; † April 8, 1950 in London ) was a Polish-born Russian ballet dancer and choreographer .

His contemporaries, who saw him dance, were impressed by his versatility, his virtuosity, his grace and jumping technique. His ability to seemingly stop a jump in the air (balloon) was considered perfect. From today's point of view, its leaps are not considered to be enormous in terms of their spatial dimensions, but impressive because of the impression they have been locked in time. The effort required for this was not visible to the audience. The impression of weightless jumps was reinforced by its ability to make silent and gentle landings. To this day, the name Nijinsky is therefore a synonym for perfect dance art.

Life

Nijinsky was born in Kiev as the second child of the dancers Tomasz Niżyński and Eleonora Bereda. From 1900 he attended the imperial dance academy in Saint Petersburg and became famous for his extraordinary virtuosity and jumping ability, from 1907 he is an artist at the Imperial Theater St. Petersburg. His sister Bronislava Nijinska (1892–1972) also achieved world fame as a ballet dancer and choreographer.

A turning point in Nijinsky's life was marked in 1908 when he met the impresario Sergei Djagilew , an avowed homosexual from the St. Petersburg upper class, whose lover he was until 1913.

Nijinsky with the Ballets Russes

Anna Pawlowa and Nijinsky in Pavillon d'Armide

Since in 1909 Sergei Djagilew was dependent on the dancers of the Mariinsky Theater (later Kirov) for his guest performances by the Ballets Russes in Paris and London, Djagilev came into conflict with the board of directors of the Mariinsky Ballet when he wanted to deliver Nijinsky for the company's tour . After a scandal, probably staged by Djagilew, in which Nijinsky appeared at a gala performance as Albrecht with Tamara Karsawina in Giselle in front of the Romanovs without the usual top trousers, only in tight ballet trousers that are common today, Nijinsky was immediately fired and the company's "draft horse". Nijinsky, Tamara Karsawina, Ida Rubinstein and Anna Pawlowa took on the roles in the choreographies specially ordered for the respective seasons.

The Ballets Russes became a major artistic event due to the passion of Paris and London society at the time. Dyagilev's talent to combine modern music and choreography with distinctive costumes and elaborately designed sets (Cocteau, Bakst, Benois and Picasso) by artists who were unknown at the time, but with new and fresh ideas to create total works of art , quickly promoted the company to the artistic avant-garde per se and made the Ballets Russes the most influential ballet company in the 20th century. Dyagilev quickly switched from classical ballets to ordered works based on music by Debussy, Stravinsky, Ravel, Richard Strauss and Manuel de Falla.

Nijinsky danced at the following first performances of the Ballets Russes: Cléopâtre (Fokine, 1909), Schéhérazade (Fokine, 1910), Carnaval (Fokine, 1910), Pétrouchka (Fokine, 1911), Le Specter de la Rose (Fokine, 1911), Le Dieu Bleu [The Blue God] (Fokine, 1912), Daphnis et Chloé (Fokine, 1912), L'après-midi d'un Faune (1912) , Jeux (1913) and Till Eulenspiegel (1917).

His own choreographies are L'après-midi d'un Faune (1912), Jeux (1913), Le Sacre du Printemps (1913) and Till Eulenspiegel (1917).

The oriental pieces

Nijinsky in Specter de la Rose

The first season of the Ballets Russes was carried by the oriental pieces popular with the Paris audience. The lyrical oriental ballets Scheherazade , Daphnis et Chloé , Le Dieu bleu were entertaining exotic daydreams in which the androgynous and catlike Nijinskys (especially as a slave in Scheherazade), who never performed the classic prince roles well, came to their best advantage. With Michel Fokine , a choreographer was found who choreographed a ballet for the first time in Les Sylphides and thus as Ballet pour le Ballet and is considered the first innovator in the genre. With Fokine's choreographic ideas, other possibilities of the representation of the classical dance were explored, with the dying swan itself philosophy implemented as dance.

The oriental pieces found a splendid highlight in Scheherazade (1910). Ida Rubinstein as Zobeide and Nijinsky as slave appeared more pantomime-like in the work, which was equipped with all the scenic effort. In Scheherazade, however, the stage production and costume designs by Leon Bakst proved to have a greater and more lasting effect than the choreographic ideas . After Le Dieu bleu had failed the audience, Diagilew temporarily separated from Fokine.

Through the Fokinian repertoire, a dancer also worked his way into the focus of action and expressive ballets for the first time. In particular, the audience waited for Nijinsky’s athletic leaps and lyrical acting talent as well as the scenographic staging, for which leading artists were engaged in the stage design and costume. With L'Oiseau de feu, Stravinsky, who was soon to write the most important contributions to the ballet score, presented a work for the first time, still committed to his teacher Rimsky-Korsakov. Here Tamara Karsawina, Nijinsky's main partner, played the role of the firebird. When Fokine was resigned from the Ballets Russes in 1912, his choreographic position was now completely taken over by Nijinsky, who had already intervened significantly in the choreographic design in Firebird, Scheherazade and Petruschka.

Le Specter de la Rose

With Specter de la Rose (1911) the reform of the choreographic works of Fokine for ballet in general and the Ballets Russes in particular begins. The new couple choreography Fokines for Karsawina and Nijinsky, which frees the male part from the classic gender assignment through an androgynous role, ushers in the revolution in couple dance, in which the male part succeeds in re-establishing itself compared to the ballerina. The ballet as an inside view of a female dream of an erotic experience and the ambiguity of gender assignment lift Le Specter de la Rose as an overall concept above the usual classical ballet tradition, but makes use of the canon of romantic ballets and its concepts of movement and space.

The Russian pieces

Stravinsky and Nijinsky (in Petrushka's costume)

In Stravinsky, for the first time since Tchaikovsky, an outstanding composer for ballet was found. The commissioned work for Petrushka was intended to prepare a break in style, which both musically bore Stravinsky's recognizable handwriting and choreographically initiated a more serious choreographic intervention by Nijinsky. The triangular relationship between Petrushka, ballerina and magician is still one of the works of modernism. When Petrushka premiered in 1911, Nijinsky's dramaturgical interpretation was seen as a miracle. Sarah Bernhardt judged Nijinsky's performance: "I'm afraid, I'm afraid, because I see the greatest actor in the world." ("J'ai peur, j'ai peur, car je vois l'acteur le plus grand du monde.") Nijinsky himself wrote about Petrushka: "He (Petrushka) is the mythical outcast in whom the suffering and pain of life are focus, who hits the wall with his fists, who will always be betrayed, despised and rejected by the world. " This description also expresses Nijinsky's own deeply ingrained self-doubt and emotionally felt inferiority.

Tamara Karsawina was also in Petruschka Nijinsky's partner, the magician was played by Nijinsky's ballet master Enrico Cecchetti .

Choreographic-musical revolution

For the first time Dyagilev handed over the work on a choreography to Nijinsky himself, whom he fully supported in artistic matters. Nijinsky's inexperience as a choreographer came in particular from the difficulty in conveying new ideas to the ensemble, particularly the novel movements in L'Après-midi d'un faune , where choppy, one-dimensional and profile movements caused considerable resistance. At the premiere of L'Après-midi d'un faune , there were violent disputes because of Nijinsky's revolutionary movements, but especially in the reactions to the sexual allusions calculated by Dyagilev. The critic Gaston Calmette was horrified and wrote: "A clumsy faun with vulgar movements of animalistic eroticism and clumsy gestures!" Auguste Rodin contradicted this in an open article and soon the "Faun" was the topic of conversation in all the feature sections of Europe. Nijinsky was then celebrated even by the sensitive London audience, who surprisingly did not get the shock of the masturbation movements at the end of the piece. The radicalism of the faun remained a unique avant-garde design, which is determined by the following factors: "Erotic scandal because of fetish (veil) and implied masturbation on stage, use of movement as material, divergent spatial and body concept that oscillate in reception , dynamic relationship between image and movement ... "(Nicole Haitzinger).

After Djagilev had celebrated an outstanding success with the Faun, he commissioned Stravinsky, after he had already contributed the music for Petrushka and L'oiseau de feu , to write a modern piece on prehistoric Russia. The work Le Sacre du Printemps to the music of the same name by Igor Stravinsky became a far-reaching work in two ways. Nijinsky's choreography and Stravinsky music overwhelmed the Parisian audience at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées to such an extent that a violent commotion broke out during the performance and the piece could only be continued after a long interruption and massive police action. The two camps in the audience broke out in such a way that there was severe resentment between Stravinsky, who saw his music degraded and blamed this on Nijinsky's choreography, and Nijinsky, who was hit particularly hard by the reaction and was dazed during the performance , came.

Stravinsky described the memorable event in his biography: “As for the current performance, I cannot judge it, as I left the hall with the first movements of the Prelude, which immediately led to scornful laughter. I revolted. This manifestation, isolated at first, soon turned into a general turmoil and led to countermeasures on the other side, which very quickly turned into a horrific roar. During the entire performance, I stood by Nijinsky's side at the entrances. He stood on a chair yelling 'Sixteen, Seventeen, Eighteen', they had their own way of counting the time. Of course, from fighting in the auditorium and their own steps, the poor dancers could not hear anything. I had to hold on to Nijinsky by the clothes, he was completely upset and ready at any time to storm the stage and cause a scandal. Diagilev had the electricians turn off the lights in hopes of stopping the commotion. That's all I remember about that first performance ».

Only Dyagilev knew he was triumphant, since such a level of reaction continued to lift the troops to the zenith of Parisian society. Stravinsky was only reconciled with the piece and the audience years later when, after a concert performance, he was not only literally but actually carried through the streets of Paris in triumph by the audience.

Sexual connotation of the three Nijinsky choreographies

Léon Bakst : Nijinsky in L'Après-midi d'un Faune , 1912

Nijinsky's groundbreaking choreography was several decades before his time and the "Sacre" was only felt to be contemporary with the Sexual Revolution . Nijinsky's third choreographic work for the Ballets Russes was the further development of the variations of the sexual themes of the previous pieces, which show the sexual evolution of a person with the "animalistic" childlike curiosity in the Faun ("L'apres midi"), who loves the one Nymph wears the robe removed, a chosen virgin ("Sacre"), who perceives the dimension of one's own sexuality in an initiation ritual in dealing with others and the threat of violence and finally in Jeux , where the playfully sexual in partnership and sexual exchange, the trying and testing Dealing with relationships and couple behavior reflected and led far beyond the usual subjects of the time.

Exclusion and return of Nijinsky to the Ballets Russes

On a tour to South America in 1913, in which Djagilew was unable to take part because he was severely seasick on ship journeys, Nijinsky fell in love with the Hungarian dancer Romola de Pulszky (1894–1978). The two married that same year. In a fit of jealousy, Sergei Dyagilev, who suffered a severe shock after the telegram arrived, dismissed both of them without notice.

During the First World War , Nijinsky was a Russian citizen in Hungarian captivity. It was not until 1916 that Dyagilev tried to offer Nijinski a role again. On the tour of the Ballets Russes through North America in 1916, Nijinsky was given another opportunity to choreograph the score by Richard Strauss , Till Eulenspiegel . During the tour, however, the signs of Nijinsky’s mental illness became increasingly clear. He sometimes suffered from delusional beliefs and clearly fell into religious conflicts. He saw his worst enemy in Djagilev, whom he was no longer to see if he was healthy. Nevertheless, Nijinsky Till Eulenspiegel was able to complete and brought the piece to the stage for the first time in New York. On the tour, the company also reached Los Angeles, a meeting of Nijinsky and Charlie Chaplin , who attended all the performances, had a lasting influence on the actor, whose roles were sometimes overwhelmed by dance and facial slapstick.

Breakdown and mental derangement

Nijinsky's grave on the Cimetière Montmartre in Paris

After his retirement, Nijinsky lived in Switzerland and suffered a severe nervous breakdown in 1919 during a private performance in St. Moritz . He was subsequently diagnosed with severe schizophrenia . That ended his career. He spent most of the rest of his life in various psychiatric clinics and nursing homes (including the Bellevue sanatorium in Kreuzlingen , Canton Thurgau ).

The individual psychologist Alfred Adler, known from Nijinski, suspected that the cause of all neuroses and psychoses had been inferiority complexes which had manifested themselves since childhood; Nijinski's disease is also said to have developed in this way. From 1938 he received insulin therapy for a year (see convulsion treatment ).

It was only when he met Russian soldiers in 1945 at his wife's house in Hungary that Nijinsky was freed from his mental blocks, and for the first time since 1919 he was able to speak freely again. After 1945 the couple moved to London, where Nijinsky was able to lead a normal life and re-establish contact with the outside world.

Nijinsky died in London in 1950, where he was also buried. Three years later he was reburied in the Cimetière de Montmartre in Paris.

Film adaptations

In 1970, British director Tony Richardson began producing the film Nijinsky . The script was written by the playwright Edward Albee . Rudolf Nurejew (as Vaclav), Claude Jade (as Romola) and Paul Scofield (as Diaghilev) were engaged for the main roles . But then the producers Albert R. Broccoli and Harry Saltzman put the project on hold.

In 1980 Nijinsky was created , a film biography by Herbert Ross with Alan Bates (Diaghilev), Pamela Brown (Romola) and George de La Pena (Nijinsky).

In the form of a television production, the dance choreography "Clown Gottes" - Lost in Madness with the chamber dancer Gregor Seyffert as Vaslav Nijinsky was created in 2002 with the ORB and the WDR . His father Dietmar Seyffert was responsible for the libretto and choreography, while Frank Schleinstein directed.

In 2009 the documentary "Nijinsky & Neumeier. A soulmate in dance" by Annette von Wangenheim was made. An ARTE / WDR production, 90 minutes.

Short film: Final (1989 Irène Jouanne)

stage

Dancer Nijinsky by Georg Kolbe , Berlin commemorative stamp from 1981

January 18, 1990: Premiere of Nijinsky - Divine Dancer at the Finnish National Opera in Helsinki. The ballet was commissioned to mark the 100th birthday of Wazlav Nijinsky from the Paris-based German composer Joseph Hölderle and the Finnish choreographer Juha Vanhakartano. The libretto (Juha Vanhakartano) is based on Nijinsky’s diary and divides the work into "life" (1st act) and "death" (2nd act), analogous to the form of the diary. The role of Nijinsky is split into an actor and a dancer. The dancer embodies and dances the most successful roles in Nijinsky based on the original historical choreographies. The actor traces the mental decline of the star, his tragic human failure. Ensemble scenes that are charged with mythological and historical references and (as reflected in the period of upheaval before the First World War ) lead to a final collapse entwine around these two parallel, oppositely synchronized dramaturgical lines from an external success story and an internal downward spiral . The ballet was one of the most successful productions of the National Opera and sold out in all performances.

In 2000 John Neumeier brought his ballet Nijinski to the stage in Hamburg . Music and a. by Nikolai Rimski-Korsakow and Dmitri Shostakovich , especially his 11th Symphony, which includes the entire second part. The plot begins with Nijinski's last appearance at a private event and superimposes, in flashbacks, biographical episodes with scenes from his ballets (partly in older choreographies by Neumeier, with the Nijinski roles being danced by different dancers), and finally in the second part to the Shostakovich Symphony to culminate in an increasing madness dance. The ballet was an outstanding success and sold out for years.

In April 2008 the premiere of the opera Nijinskys Tagebuch by Detlev Glanert took place at the Aachen Theater . This covers the last 60 days of the dancer, from the diagnosis of schizophrenia to complete breakdown and admission to a closed institution .

Nijinsky's life, diary and work inspired the filmmaker, camerawoman and director Elfi Mikesch to write a play entitled Burning Horse , which she brought out in 2008 with the Thikwa Theater.

The dance theater piece " Fire in the head - Solo for Waslaw Nijinski " by the Swiss dancer and choreographer Patrick Erni (Mannheim and Frankfurt, 2002) in the production of Christian Golusda is also based on the so-called diaries ("I am a philosopher who feels") . Even Oliver Reese wrote based on the diaries his solo piece "I am Nijinsky. I am Death." Which he premiered in 2013 at the Schauspielhaus Frankfurt Alte Oper. In Poland since 2006 until today, very similar were the reflections of the members of another group, the "Society-Wierszalin" from their play "Bóg Niżyński" (Eng. Gott-Nijinsky ) directed by Piotr Tomaszuk based on the personal diary by Vaslav Nijinskys.

literature

• Petra van Cronenburg: The fascination of Nijinsky . Verl.-Haus Monsenstein and Vannerdat , Münster 2011, ISBN 978-3-86991-362-9
• Richard Buckle: Nijinsky. Translated by Jürgen Abel . Busse Seewald, Herford 1987, ISBN 3-512-00788-0 (Original edition: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London 1971)
• Romola Nijinsky: Nijinsky. The god of dance . Translated by Hans Bütow. Insel Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1974 (paperback edition: Insel Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1981, ISBN 3-458-32266-3 )
• Peter Ostwald: I am God. Waslaw Nijinski, life and madness . Translated by Christian Golusda. Foreword by John Neumeier. European Publishing House, Hamburg 1997, ISBN 3-434-50066-9

Individual evidence

1. ↑ see the date of birth on the artist's grave
2. ↑ Вацлав Фомич Нижинский / Vatslav Fomich Nizhinskiy ( Memento from April 18, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) (Russian)
3. ↑ Ida Rubinstein, Scheherazade
4. ^ Nicole Haitzinger: Reform, revolution, spectacle. On avant-garde dance and society designs for the Ballets Russes
5. ^ Guardian, From the archives: An obituary of Vaslav Nijinsky
6. ↑ ^{a b} Der Spiegel : I am God , July 26, 1982
7. ↑ Dorion Weickmann in the article "Hundred years of Ballets Russes - Nijinsky's revolution in dance continues to have an impact today", Süddeutsche Zeitung from 22./23. August 2009
8. ^ New York Times, ARTS ABROAD; At the Altar of Nijinsky, Elusive Firebird and Faun, Nov. 9, 2000 At the Altar of Nijinsky, Elusive Firebird and Faun
9. ↑ Nicole Haitzinger
10. ↑ Igor Stawinsky: Chroniques de ma vie (réédition de 1962), p. 77
11. ↑ Jeux ( Memento of October 12, 2009 in the Internet Archive ), on cmi.univ-mrs.fr
12. ↑ Vaslav Nijinsky, excerpt from the recordings of the performance in St. Moritz, NYT The Diary of Vaslav Nijinsky
13. ^ Linde, Otfried K .: Pharmakopsychiatrie im Wandel der Zeit. Experiences and results . Tilia-Verlag Klingenmünster 1988; Page 100 - Text excerpt: "The patient could not be cured."
14. ↑ Data for the film Nijinsky on The Internet Movie Database
15. ^ Database Finnish National Opera performances
16. ↑ WDR 5 : Scala   broadcast  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. dated April 7, 2008
17. ↑ Burning Horse by Elfi Mikesch in the Thikwa Theater

Web links

Commons : Vaslav Nijinsky  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Vaslav Nijinsky in the catalog of the German National Library
• Vaslav Nijinsky in the Internet Movie Database (English)
• Representations by Vaslav Nijinsky in the Internet Movie Database (English)
• Short biography of Dick Andros