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EYE ON NIJINSKY – NIJINSKY’S EYE
by John Neumeier
“
I am the present and not what has been” Diary of Vaslav Nijinsky.
Dance speaks only in the present tense. There is no movement, step or ges-
ture to suggest “yesterday” or to indicate any possible other or future time.
Dance is in essence a living art. Only in the moment, only in that flash of rec-
ognition, when a movement is executed by the dancer and witnessed by one or
thousands of people, does, in this dialogue between action and observation,
the art of dance exist. All my own ballets are thus “works in progress” – so
long as I live. My function in rehearsing, restaging or simply watching them be
performed is to experience anew and, in light of my current emotional reac-
tion and rational judgement, to change them – breathing the life of this pre-
cise moment into an established dance text. There is only one performance,
I tell my dancers, this one – now! Of course, for the audience the impression
of choreography may have its second life in memory. But memory, too, is in
constant movement and will change as the after-images of a performance
illuminate the imagination with emotional presence – or slowly fade.
Being so clearly aware of the ephemeral quality of dance, why would a chore-
ographer become a collector? The answer for me goes back to my childhood
in Milwaukee. This quiet Midwestern city had, during my youth, neither its own
ballet company nor a major school of dance. Experiencing the irrepressible
impulse to dance and wishing to define this exciting sensation, caused me to
search for answers and evidence of an unknown action, which I later under-
stood to be an art. At first, there were books – words, but more importantly
pictures – images that slowly helped me to define a determining force grow-
ing within me. Over the years, as this force took form in technique, books and
images fed my imagination with visions of a possible future. With my develop-
ment as a dancer and choreographer, the objects of reference became “a
collection.” As physical skill developed, as creative potential became created
repertoire, the collection grew and continues to grow.
“
The Tragedy of Nijinsky,” a book I borrowed from my neighborhood library,
initiated my fascination with Nijinsky – the dancer whose ambivalent pres-
ence would inspire countless artists whose work in turn would later become
the nucleus of my collection. Although Anatole Bourman’s biography of the
Polish-Russian dancer was later considered unreliable and quite simply “a bad
book,” his subjective, sympathetic description of the person and enthusiastic
portrayal of the artist fired my fantasy and established Vaslav Nijinsky as a
living being in my consciousness. Over the years more and more books, infor-
mation - then drawings, paintings, photographs, and documents were col-
lected in order to complete the still incomplete puzzle – the enigma Nijinsky.
Who was Nijinsky? What was Nijinsky? Seen through the eyes of various artists
and photographers between 1906 and 1950, he has many faces. In a pose of
smug, self-contented arrogance, Jacques-Emile Blanche sits Nijinsky in Ori-
ental dress, crossed-legged on a beach, in front of a brilliant turquoise and
azure-blue sea. Based on the series of photographs taken by Eugène Druet
on the lawn of and in the artist’s Passy Studio, Blanches’ circular oil painting
suggests a kind of turn of the century surrealism. Another guest that same
summer afternoon in June of 1910 was the young Jean Cocteau, who ren-
dered Nijinsky more simply in his “Danse Siamoise” costume. The drawing, in
bold but minimal pencil lines highlighted with India ink, is signed and dedicated
with a humorous message by the dancer himself: “à Jean Cocteau avec une
bonne poignée de pieds. W. Nijinsky.” This drawing is sometimes accredited to
the dancer himself, but comparison with similar Cocteau ink drawings of the
s his “JC” signature at the bottom center of the page
