Nijinsky (16 page)

Lifar (who did not meet Diaghilev until the early 1920s) described a bolt of inspiration striking Diaghilev as he and Nijinsky sat in the Piazza San Marco one afternoon in the autumn of 1910.
‘Leaping to his feet
there and then, between two pillars, he began to depict the dense angular plastic
*
movements of this ballet, and so enthused Nijinsky that for a time all else was ousted from his mind.' Leaving aside the visual incongruities of this scene, it seems clear that while they toured Europe between them, Diaghilev and Bakst, with Nijinsky present and eagerly absorbing their ideas, formulated the idea for a new ballet that would be not romantically classical (like the dances of Isadora Duncan – her dances were emphatically not ballets – in her filmy tunic and sandals, as well as those of Fokine) but avant-garde and austere, inspired by Bakst's visits to the remnants of the muscular ancient cultures of Crete, Knossos and Mycenae.

Indebted to the radical theories of the director Vsevolod
Meyerhold
, it was to be a
‘moving bas-relief
, all in profile, a ballet with no dancing but only movement and plastic attitude' – an approach that echoed both the ‘sonorous, monotonous and empty line' of which Mallarmé's Faun
was dreaming and the archaic Greek vases and sculpture Bakst had studied. Since this was Nijinsky's first attempt at choreography, Diaghilev and Bakst were hoping to keep as much creative control as possible in their experienced hands; they chose the music and Nijinsky apparently never even read the poem that was its source.

Even so, Vaslav had absorbed their ideas by the time he spoke to Bronia about his ballet for the first time, although he was determined, as he told her, that Greece would be only
‘the source
of my inspiration. I want to render it in my own way.' Night after night, in front of Bronia's dressing-table mirror, set on the floor in their mother's living room, he moulded her body and his own into the shapes of the Faun and his Nymphs, taking the first bold steps towards abstraction in dance.

His method of almost sculptural choreography – worked out on the artist's own body and then communicated to the other dancers – is commonplace today, but no one had worked in this way before Nijinsky. The painter Mikhail Larionov described watching him work in subsequent rehearsals, what he described as
‘laboratory experiments in
movement, attempts at creation. Sometimes after an hour's work only a single movement would be fixed. Like a sculptor or a painter with a lay figure, he took hold of the dancer, moving his limbs in different directions, stepping back to judge the effect. “No use, no use. Wait; hold it; not bad like that. That's right now.” Sometimes nothing at all would please him, then suddenly came a pose that would seem interesting; he would retain it and begin to build around it, always experimenting and groping for something that was not quite articulate.'

Marie Rambert participated in the process Larionov described. ‘
Explaining
[what he wanted from a dancer] is the wrong word when applied to Nijinsky. He spoke very little, and words did not come easily to him, which is why the rehearsing of his ballets took so long. But he demonstrated the details of the movement so clearly and perfectly that it left no doubt as to the way it had to be done.'

Despite the intuitive understanding between Bronia and Vaslav, it was not an easy process. Bronia was amazed by how her brother,
‘without any preparation
, is in complete mastery of the new technique of his
ballet. In his own execution, each movement, each position of the body, and the expression of each choreographic moment is perfect.' But what he was demanding of her was difficult – the usually reverent Bronia actually used the word unreasonable – and Vaslav, impatient to see his vision realised, was ‘unable to take into account human limitations'. While she understood the delicate precision of his work, knowing that ‘any undue tension in the rhythm of the movements, any small mistake, could destroy the whole composition, leaving only a caricature of the choreographic idea', still she often found it impossible to ‘master the refinements of each detail of the movement'.

Before they left St Petersburg in February they showed their work to Diaghilev and Bakst. Bakst was immediately supportive, understanding as Bronia did the monumental newness of what Vaslav was creating, but Diaghilev had doubts: the ‘inkstand' had gone rather beyond his remit. He was uneasy about the
‘unexpected and unusual severity
of the composition and the lack of dance movements' and worried about presenting to the public someone so young – Vaslav was only twenty-two – as a choreographer. Finally, having signed Fokine up for the 1911 season as
directeur choreographique
(though this year Vaslav, as the company's official
premier danseur
, would be dancing all the leads), Diaghilev was reluctant to antagonise him. He postponed
Faune
for a year.

In the spring of 1911, on their way to Paris, Nijinsky and Diaghilev visited Émile Jaques-Dalcroze's school for eurythmics outside Dresden, interested to hear more about his new theories on the relationship of music to movement – particularly pertinent at this moment as they embarked on the experiment of
Faune
, although its main choreography was already in place. Dalcroze did not teach dance but he believed music could only be fully understood through movement and had developed a system of education incorporating singing, games and improvisation, based on new psychological and physiological insights, that was intended to develop an integral and creative musicality.

Richard Buckle suggested that Diaghilev was taken aback by the
‘remoteness of music
from movement' in Nijinsky's early sketches for
Faune
, while Diaghilev's most recent biographer, Sjeng Scheijen,
speculates that Diaghilev may have hoped Jaques-Dalcroze's rhythmical exercises would
‘compensate for
Nijinsky's lack of musical knowledge'. But I think attacking Nijinsky for lacking musicality (as Diaghilev later did, to Lifar and others, and as Stravinsky did) was just an easy way of undermining him. All the evidence suggests that Nijinsky was
perfectly musically literate
at the very high standard required by a dancer. He played the piano by ear, remembering music that he had heard only a few times, according to his sister, with exceptional facility; he was quite capable of playing four-handed pieces with Maurice Ravel, as shown in a photograph from about 1912. The dance notation system on which he worked throughout his career, according to its modern student, Ann Hutchinson Guest, reveals a deep understanding of the intricacies of music notation. Further, the critical response to Nijinsky's performances praised his musicality: Cyril Beaumont called his dancing
‘music made visible
'. Even Fokine, who did not like
Faune
, congratulated Nijinsky with his customary backhandedness for having in it
‘the courage to stand still
when the music seemed to demand agitated movement'.

More importantly, the radical nature of what Nijinsky was trying to do with
Faune
, and indeed in his choreography as a whole, demanded a new and radical approach to music and its relationship to dance. The composers to whom Vaslav was drawn – Arnold Schoenberg, Richard Strauss and Stravinsky, in particular – created music to which it seemed almost impossible to dance. Pavlova had refused to dance
L'Oiseau de feu
because the music was
‘horribly decadent
', meaning too modern; Karsavina did it, but she recognised that contemporary music and choreography did not always do justice to her lyrical, elegant style. Fokine, Grigoriev and others thought Stravinsky's music undanceable. But Nijinsky, trying to fashion something totally new, required this level of difficulty from the music for which he wanted to create movement.

This debate did not begin until Nijinsky started choreographing. Though his contemporaries agreed he was an extraordinary dancer, actor and performer, there was no consensus on the works he created for others. Very often, critical views were coloured by personal allegiances. Fokine praised his dancing but believed Nijinsky had ousted him from
the Ballets Russes and therefore never credited him as a choreographer, and in any case his style was a reaction against (or an overt rejection of) Fokine's. Grigoriev had little faith in Nijinsky's talents but he was Fokine's friend, whom Fokine had brought into the company. Walter Nouvel, like Alexandre Benois, never saw Nijinsky as anything more than Diaghilev's creature – but Nouvel and Benois were both Diaghilev's friends before anything else. They had condescended to Nijinsky for years, and could not fathom the petulant adolescent they had first met blossoming into a creative artist. To them he was almost an idiot savant – the only genius they were willing to credit him with was subconscious. These prejudices would crystallise as Nijinsky's revolutionary (or ridiculous, for those who took the other view) ideas took shape.

The 1911 season had been dominated by two new ballets:
Le Spectre de la Rose
and
Petrushka
. That winter, for the first time, Nijinsky did not return to Russia and the company played in London and toured central Europe. Pavlova returned to Diaghilev for a few performances, finally agreeing to dance her celebrated Giselle opposite Nijinsky's Albrecht.

And after years of rivalry, Mathilde Kshesinskaya had permitted Diaghilev to win her over so that she too could taste the delights of the Ballets Russes's foreign triumphs, consenting – entirely on her own terms – to perform with his company for a limited season. Her performances were notable less for her dancing than for the staggering quantity of jewels with which she was encrusted (she brought her million-rouble collection with her, storing it at Fabergé's London shop, and the Savoy arranged for two plain-clothes detectives to guard the jewels whenever she wore them), but, swathed off-stage in ermine, even at forty her star quality was undeniable. As
The Times
's ballet critic observed, unlike Karsavina or Pavlova,
‘she never makes one forget
that she is a
prima ballerina
'.

She and Diaghilev were well-matched sparring partners. One evening at dinner he said to her,
‘Oh, Mathildoshka
; yes. You are superb. You deserve all your success, even to the two Grand Dukes at your feet.'

‘But Sergey Pavlovich,' she replied, not missing a beat. ‘I have two feet.'

Their last stop, in March, was Budapest which, in its own way, would prove to be the site of an event as momentous in Nijinsky's life as Diaghilev's gift of
Faune
. Sitting in the audience at the Municipal Opera House with her then-fiancé's mother was a very determined and resourceful young lady of nineteen (later she would say she had been sixteen), Romola de Pulszky. Overwhelmed by the colours, the beauty, and the passion on stage in front of her, she decided to discover all she could about the Ballets Russes and its dazzling star – Nijinsky.

It was a piece of good fortune for Romola that her mother, Emilia Márkus, was Hungary's most celebrated actress. Using her theatrical connections, Romola made friends with Adolph Bolm, who told her about Nijinsky
‘almost as a priest
might speak of a divinity'. There was no opportunity to meet her idol – she could not have known that Diaghilev had constructed around his precious, troubling Vatsa an invisible but impenetrable wall – and anyway, she wasn't sure if she wanted to: though his ‘genius' had swept her off her feet, he gave her ‘an uncanny feeling of apprehension'.

In March 1912 the Ballets Russes reconvened in Monte Carlo to prepare for the upcoming year. This was the Riviera's high season and the ice cream-coloured hotels and restaurants overflowed with a glamorous, raffish set: portly American tycoons with money to burn on the baize-covered tables of the casino, French and English aristocrats, extravagantly moustachioed Maharajas and bearded Grand Dukes. One particular admirer of Diaghilev and his troupe was the Aga Khan, whom – in hopes of his backing – Diaghilev permitted to attend the meetings of what he called his ‘heads of department': Nijinsky, Stravinsky, Bakst, Karsavina and Cecchetti.

One evening the Aga Khan took Karsavina out to dinner.
‘When she unfolded
her napkin, there was a huge emerald concealed in it. She gently but firmly pushed it away': Karsavina was no Kshesinskaya. Diaghilev urged her to accept it, on the grounds that a jewel from the Aga Khan was a bouquet from another man, but she would not. The disappointed prince consoled himself with another dancer, Josefina Kovaleska, nearly
as pretty as Karsavina but importantly more interested than her in presents hidden in napkins.

Rehearsals for
Faune
now began in earnest. If Nijinsky had found it hard to explain to his sister what he wanted from her, the other artists were impossible. Grigoriev said the
‘dancers dreaded
the monotony and fatigue' of working on
Faune
and Bronia's memoirs corroborate this.
‘Up to then
the ballet artist had been free to project his own individuality [on a role] … he was even expected to embellish it according to his own taste, possibly neglecting the exactness of the choreographic execution.' What mattered was the mood of the piece and preserving the basic steps and the groupings on stage. But with
Faune
Nijinsky demanded that the artists perform exactly as
he
understood their roles: they were his instruments, not his collaborators, and he would permit them no freedom of interpretation. ‘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.' For a nine-minute ballet this precision required ninety rehearsals – well above the usual number.

Marie Rambert remembered watching Nijinsky teach a new dancer one of the nymph's roles. When he asked her why she looked so frightened, she replied that she thought she was meant to be scared. Nijinsky retorted that he was not interested in how she felt:
‘the movement he gave
her was all that was required of her'. For him, the face was
‘merely an extension
of the body', as one admiring critic would write of his work. ‘It is above all the body that speaks.'