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Vaslav Nijinsky

Vaslav Nijinsky was a Russian dancer of Polish nationality, born in Ukraine, married to Hungarian in Argentina, whose career peaked in France, made tours across America and Africa, and was hospitalized in Switzerland. He died in England, is buried in Paris, and was an international star in every possible way.

While both his parents had academic education in dancing and made a living at theaters, operas, and circuses, the family was not particularly financially successful. When father left the others with a pregnant mistress, things didn’t improve.

Vaslav was an extremely talented boy who entered Imperial Ballet School at nine and made a stage debut at ten years in the role of a chimney sweep. He was described as a kid with extremely ordinary and colorless face, amazing dancing talents and poor study skills (with an exception of geometry).

His younger sister Bronislava, who often did his homework, well documented his early career, writing about his ‘performances’ dancing on the doorknob or jumping as high as a ball bounces.

Unfortunately, we don’t have a video documentary about his superb dancing skills, but according to the photos we can still conclude about his luxurious talent and ability to transform himself into a wide variety of credible characters on the dance podiums.

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Nijinsky’s life is full of interesting facts, starting with the unclear date of birth and ending with mental illness when he started to believe he is a god.

Despite his indisputable talent and head start at the Imperial Ballet in St. Petersburg as so-called coryphee (dancer ranked between an ordinary member of the ensemble but below the solo dancer), this was not enough.

He needed a sponsor and he found it in Prince Lvov, who financially helped at his next career steps when the two of them briefly became lovers. Such ‘sponsorship’ was widely accepted in those times and was even encouraged by Vaslav’s mother Eleonora.

Prince got bored of young ballet dancer pretty soon and introduced him to several friends among which was Sergei Diaghilev, who was even older (due to the uncertain birthdate of Nijinsky we can only speculate there were about 17 years of age difference) and soon he became Vaslav’s protegee and lover.

Diaghilev was one of the most influential Russian artists of the time, trying to break the somehow stale traditionalism in existing artistic ways. He and other members of the so-called World of Art group brought fresh ideas from the West, but Russian art made its way to West as well.

When Diaghilev decided to follow a successful exhibition of paintings and a series of concerts with opera and ballet productions, Nijinsky was at the right time in the right place. Performances in Paris and other European cities were so successful Diaghilev decided to set a permanent group called Ballets Russes.

With music, decor and enthusiastic dances with Nijinsky in leading roles, they charmed the audience all over Europe. Parisians nicknamed him ‘The God of Dance’. Controversies surrounding Diaghilev’s and Nijinsky’s relationship, Vaslav’s provocative interpretations and numerous fans who tried to break into his wardrobe to steal his underwear (!) helped to build a reputation which was upgraded with Nijinsky’s first choreographic attempts.

While he was a superb dancer, the choreography was probably his ultimate artistic call. He dared to challenge all traditional elements of ballet and is now recognized as one of the artists who pushed the ballet into modernism.

Performances of his interpretations caused an uproar among the audience and at the Rite of Spring the police had to be called. His incompetence in communication caused many fights with dancers, composers, and critics.

At the same time, his relationship with Diaghilev wasn’t as good as it was before. Diaghilev hired Nijinsky’s rival Michel Fokine for next project and suggested Vaslav take a break for a full year.

When group set off on the tour to South America, Diaghilev, who fear the sea, didn’t accompany Vaslav and being for weeks on board with Romola de Pulszky, Hungarian ballerina from a wealthy family, who fancied him for years, Nijinsky did something extraordinary again – he married Romola.

How that happened is still not clear, because they didn’t share a language at the time, but they took wedding vows in Buenos Aires right after landing. When Diaghilev heard the news, he telegraphed Nijinsky he was fired from the group.

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This was the start of a long and painful way down. Nijinsky tried to build his own group but dismissed it after only two weeks experiencing a first mental breakdown. First signs of schizophrenia appeared.

For almost two years he was a prisoner of war (in house arrest at his wife’s home in Budapest) where he unsuccessfully tried to develop special dance notation, similar to music notes. After release, he joined Diaghilev’s group again, this time in the USA, but without success, he was used to.

Apart from that, he met two deeply religious men: Nicholas Zverev and Dmitry Kostrovsky, both devoted followers of Tolstoy’s philosophy. Nijinsky became vegetarian, started preaching nonviolence and using the democratic system in the dancing troupe, which eventually led to significant financial losses.

After the tour in America with the final performance in Uruguay, he and his wife moved to St. Moritz. About one year after his mental health started to deteriorate. At the beginning of 1919 he wrote now famous diary, which is now believed the most detailed diary of an artist who suffered mental illness.

He had psychotic episodes, occasional hallucinations and was hospitalized in a sanatorium. Thanks to isolation and overall confusion some things from his private life will never be clear. His second daughter, for instance, maybe a love child from an affair of his wife with one of his doctors. Or maybe not.

What we know for sure, is the fact he changed several clinics and never found inner peace again. He died at 60 years of age in London and is buried in Paris. We also know he was a brilliant artist who might achieve much much more if the circumstances were not as they were.

But on the other hand, in different circumstances he would probably not be a part of the avant-garde, so we can only guess and regret there are no video recordings of his performances.