Nijinsky (54 page)

1. Nijinsky in the dress uniform of the Imperial Theatre School,
c
.1900. This was taken at the time that Nijinsky, aged eleven, entered the senior schoool as one of six male students in his year and won the coveted scholarship that would fund his education. The silver lyres, the school's insignia, are embroidered on his collar.

2. Nijinsky and Anna Pavlova in the first version of
La Pavillion d'Armide
, 1907. It was as Armida's Favourite Slave, a role written especially for him the year he graduated, that the eighteen year-old Nijinsky in his pearl choker bewitched Prince Lvov and Sergey Diaghilev.

3. Nijinsky in Paris in 1909. Along with the rest of the Ballets Russes, the awkward boy found himself inhabiting ‘an unreal and enchanted world'.

4. Nijinsky in playful mood, posing for publicity stills for the ‘Danse Siamoise' for the photographer Druet in his garden in Paris, 1910.

5. The composer Igor Stravinsky and Nijinsky as Petrushka by Bert, 1911. Even posing off stage Nijinsky is in character, arms handing woodenly by his sides, his feet turned in,
en dedans
, and his expression as blankly quizzical as a puppet's.

6. Bronia Nijinska as the Street Dancer and Ludmilla Schollar as a Gypsy flank Kobelev, the Organ Grinder, in their costumes for
Petrushka
, 1911. Bronia's dance was a parody of Mathilde Kshesinskaya's style, an in-joke only devotees of the Ballets Russes would have understood.

7. Nijinsky as the Rose (1911) with his face made up to resemble ‘a celestial insect, his eyebrows suggesting some beautiful beetle … his mouth was like rose petals'.

8.
Plus nu que nu
: Nijinsky as the Faun by Bert, 1912, wearing a short tail, horns, pointed, elongated ears and the dappled body stocking which, before every performance, Léon Bakst painted directly onto him. He looked, as one observer said, even more than naked. ‘One could not define where the human ended and the animal began'.

9. Playing
Daphnis et Chloë
, a ballet choreographed by Nijinsky's in-house rival, Mikhail Fokine, with its composer Maurice Ravel in Paris, 1912. Note Nijinsky's look of utter concentration.

10. Dancing the turkey trot with Tamara Karsavina while Ludmilla Schollar waits in
Jeux
, 1913, the first ballet set in the contemporary world. Karsavina and Schollar wear white tennis dresses designed by Paquin and Nijinsky is in a white version of his usual practise clothes.