For some, Nijinsky was foremost a choreographer. I, too, believe that Nijin-
sky did pave the way for modern choreography. Conceiving each ballet as
a completely choreographed whole and creating for each new work a spe-
cific movement language, he broke completely with the idea of interpreting a
story which can be related in words as a pretext for dance. The story was the
dance. The dance was the story. His ballets consisted of images projected
directly through the substance of movement.
Of those works inspired by Nijinsky’s own choreography in my collection cer-
tainly most striking is Una Troubridge’s bronze head of Nijinsky as the Faun,
which was, in June of 1975, my first major acquisition from one of the last
great Russian Ballet sales at Sotheby’s in London. This sculpture, the only
one of his face modeled from life (except for the incomplete sketch by Rodin)
is one of four bronze castings of the plaster bust found by Lydia Sokolova
in October 1954. It is a version of the head, originally in wax, based on the
sketches Troubridge made in London in 1913, observing Nijinsky during his
daily classes in the drill hall on Goodge Street and watching him from the
wings during performance. Her etchings accompanying this unique sculpture
indicate not only a careful and complete preparation for the bust, but tell
us how subtly Nijinsky immerged himself into the main character of his first
ballet “L’Après-midi d’un Faune”. Aside from the stylized wig with indication
of horns and waxed tipped ears, he seems to wear no make-up – yet his face
is, once again, transformed. Gustave Gillot’s sculpture of Nijinsky in the same
role seems in contrast a period piece, a French Art Nouveau representation
of the dancer whose choreographic concepts and performances were surely
more avant garde than their representation in the art of the time. Nijinsky’s
vision was clearly not only ahead of its time, but ahead of those artists at-
tracted to visualize him.
Valentine Hugo’s sketches of Marie Piltz in various poses from her final solo
in Nijinsky’s 1913 ballet “Le Sacre du Printemps.” meticulously combined with
the corresponding bars in Stravinsky’s score – their film-like sequences sug-
gesting the flow of Nijinsky’s choreography – are invaluable research ma-
terial. However, her curving lines are somehow too delicately graceful and
belie the brutal starkness we associate with this ballet’s conception. Hugo’s
pastel drawings of scenes and situations in Nijinsky’s second ballet “Jeux,”
seem more in keeping with the theme, sensuality and ambiguous relationships
of this ballet. “Jeux”, the first ballet danced in modern dress, takes its basic
idea and form from popular culture. The ritual and routine of the tennis court
suggested the “game” between people. It was the first ballet to use sport as
a metaphor for subliminal erotic currents in human relationships. There was
no plot one could explain in words and hardly any external action. The theme
of “Jeux” was in a sense non-action – the unspoken, the unspeakable. The
choreography was a reflection of interior emotional states. A ball rolls onto
the stage – one, two, three dancers enter, leave, return – the ball rolls. No
words can describe what actually happened… Inspired by the painter Paul
Gaugin, the sculptural shapes of this ballet represented, as Richard Buckle
remarks, “an essay in formal relations.”
The important American scenic designer Robert Edmond Jones drew boldly
in brilliant pastel strokes sketches for Nijinsky’s fourth and last ballet “Till
Eulenspiegel.” Together with the 1916 photographs from White Studio New
ive a fascinating suggestion of Nijinsky’s elaborate last work, seen
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EYE ON NIJINSKY – NIJINSKY’S EYE cont.
