Drawings of Nijinsky

    When Nijinsky was miserable for his mental illness,he turned his career from a ballet dancer to a visual artist. Unfortunately, at that time people thought his works were worthless and regarded him as a mad man.

   Nijinsky is a  legend known for his brilliant dance and choreograph, who had no visual art training. He spent his later half life time to struggle with schizophrenic until he died at 69.

   "I believe that Nijinsky's work will be appreciated today in a way that he could never have been appreciated in his lifetime," said William Emboden, the Irvine Museum's research director, who likes Nijinsky's drawing works a lot."People often assume that if a person is judged to be mentally unstable or psychotic, you can't take their art too seriously. But I think that assumption is being progressively dispelled," said Emboden.

   Nijinsky created many drawings, which are now permanent loan to the Irvine Museum. There are more than 75 pieces in media ranging from inks to colored chalks, plus several paintings, marquee posters and sculptures of Nijinsky by. It also includes photographs of the dancer on and off stage, purple petals from his famous "Le Spectre de la Rose" costume and other costumes, ballet slippers, elaborate costume designs by Leon Bakst, and such personal effects as his birth and death certificates, letters, and hairbrushes.

Le Spectre de la Rose

Le Spectre de la Rose

Le Spectre de la Rose

  Nijinsky was achieved widespread celebrity with Ballet Russes. However, when he was diagnosed with schizophrenic, his life was ruined. But what's strange is that most of his drawing works dated from 1916 to 1919, which was much earlier than the year Nijinsky was diagnosed with schizophrenic. So there are some people demonstrating it is the nature of Nijinsky, which means the genius was also a mad man in nature. 

Here is  a review for Nijinsky's Bloomsbury Ballet

 The book is about how Hodson reconstructed Nijinsky's brilliant dances. She searched for documentaries of lost ballet dance. Finally Hodson found something very important, which was Nijinsky's notes! Once she founded that, she collected them carefully. Hodson then translated and matched the notes with Nijinsky's art life. Fortunately, the notes were made at an early stage in Nijinsky's own choreographer's process. Unfortunately, the notes were not complete and they did little help to Hodson's research. So Hodson concluded that they prove that history is an unfinished affair. The book just tells us the process of How Hodson did research to save the lost dance performed and choreographed by Nijinsky.

Why I chose Nijinsky

Vaslav Nijinsky, who died 64 years ago, was one of the most famous dancers in the world. But the dance in him had died 30 years before that, leaving him to spend half his lifetime in and out of mental institutions. Astonishingly, at the very point in his life that he was going mad, when, in fact, the dance was leaving him, he started to write a diary, and kept on writing for six weeks.

               

        During the First World War, Nijinsky suffered from Hunger but Diaghilev succeeded in getting him released for a North American tour in 1916. Thereafter, though, the dancer became more and more mentally ill. He was even taken  for treatment to Switzerland. There he suffered a nervous breakdown in 1919, and spent the rest of his life in and out of psychiatric institutions. 

        In 1919,Nijinsky began writing a diary and he continued to do so for six weeks. A version of this diary was first published in English in 1936. In a review of the French edition, The New York Times said: ‘Much of the text reads like a stream of consciousness dominated by a series of fixations, including Nijinsky’s identification with God and Jesus Christ, his love of humanity, his concern for feelings, his distaste for eating meat, his disdain for money, his wife’s curiosity about his writing and his need to confess his sexual habits.’
       There are many reviews of the diary  on the internet. The New York Times concludes about the English edition with this thought: ‘The diary’s final lines are not, as the old edition had it, ‘God seeks me and therefore we will find each other,’ but a mundane thought that never gets finished. How ironic that in erasing the real ugliness of his insanity, the old version silenced not only Nijinsky’s true voice but the magnificently gifted body from which it came. And how fortunate we are to have them both restored.’

        Here is a very interesting extract from The Diaries of Vaslav Nijinsky I really like it.. . . I am afraid of the Stock Exchange because I do not know it. I went there once with Diaghilev, who knew a man who was a stockbroker. Diaghilev gambled for low stakes and therefore won. I will gamble for low stakes because I too want to win. I know that little people lose because they get very nervous and do silly things. I will observe everyone with complete detachment, and I will understand everything. I do not like knowing everything in advance, but God wants to show me the way people live and therefore is warning me. I will go to the railway station on foot and not in a cab. If everyone is going in a cab, I will too. God wants to show people that I am the same kind of person as they are ...................

  I will go now..............

  I am waiting..............
        I do not want.............
        I will go to my wife’s mother and talk to her because I do not want her to think that I like Oscar more than her. I am checking her feelings. She is not dead yet, because she is envious.................’

 From the extract, we can see how serious Nijinsky's illness is. He became a mad and apparently nervous artist. Or because he is a great artist, who was born a temperamental genius. That's why I chose Nijinsky. Geniuses and great men all have something totally different from normal people. However, they are always considered mad men. I really appreciate people who can stick to his dreams even nobody understands him, which really needs courage and adherence. Nevertheless, even though we are just ordinary people, we still need to keep moving and pursue our dreams. Never give up. 

The Legend: The Ballet Russes

 Art is related to history closely in the age of Modernism. Art borrowed from the past to invent the new. Ballet is an art form striding over physical and political obstacles to present social and cultural development.

   Ballet first appeared during the time of the Italian Renaissance in the court of King Louis XIV in the 17^th century. In the 18^th century, ballet combined French opera and became part of court entertainments in France. However, in the early 19^th century, other European cities started producing a string of masterworks, including London, Vienna and Copenhagen.

  Ballet combined singing, dancing and orchestral performances, which made ballet more beautiful from 1830, called the golden age. When it comes to the late 19^th century, St Petersburg began its rise. When French dancer and choreographer Marius Petipa collaborated with composer Tchaikovsky, they created wonderful sound and performance.Well-known The Sleeping Beauty, The Nutcracker, Swan Lake and Le Corsaire were all works of this time. And they created the new classical tratditon.

  In 1909, Vaslav Nijinsky, a brilliant young male dancer overwhelmed all audiences with his dancing. The company, the Ballet Russes was seeking celebrities as dancers of it. The company was directed by its impresario Sergei Diaghlev, who turned ballet into a rock star activity in the early 20^th century. The Ballet Russes only used twenty years to lit up world stages of ballet. It combined the very best of contemporary and music of its time, while respecting its traditions. Ballet managed to survive the Russian Revolution in 1917 and became an important activity between World War I and World War II.

 

Sergei Diaghilev

                   

                                              Nijinsky

The Ballet Russes Company was dissolved following Diaghilev’s death in 1929 when the heart went out of it, but its artistic consequences were to be enormous as the stone gathering moss rolled on and it reanimated ballet throughout Western Europe.

                              

Wokrs of Nijinsky

  As one of the greatest ballet dancers and choreographers in the 20^th century, Nijinsky left many classical works for people. I'm going to talk about several works of Nijinsky.

  The first one is Schéhérazade.Afterthe success of Cléopâtre,Nijinsky starred a dark and sumptuous drama, Schéhérazade., which was created by the team of Diaghilev. It’s a ballet based on the first tale of the Thousand and One Nights, Queen Zobeïde bids farewell to her husband, the Sultan.  When he left the seraglio, the Queen brought the male slaves to join her and the other women. While the Suletan returns, he killed The Golden Slave, who is the Queen’s favorite. Schéhérazade was so guilty and shamed that she took her own life. Schéhérazade , this murderous plot attracted a lot of audiences and become a hit and a staple work, which was performed for twenty years, where The Golden Slade was also one of Nijinsky's iconicroles.

                         

Schéhérazade

   The second one is L’Après-Midi d’un Faune, which was the first choreography of Nijinsky. It was influenced by Fokine a lot, and it made a change in choreographic aesthetic of the dance world. Nijinsky tried the imitative realism of Fokine to create a more modern ballet, which was a new art form that didn’t exist before.

Vedio:L’Après-Midi d’un Faune Part I 

   The third one is Petrouchka, which tells a story of the love affair of a puppet. The stage was set as the fair in St. Petersburg. The choreographer was Michel Fokine, and Nijinsky played the starring role in it. In 1916, it was one of the pieces that was most eagerly awaited by audiences.

VideoPetrouchka

    The fourth one is Till Eulenspiegel, which was produced in NYC in 1916. Nijinsky played the title role and was the choreographer of it. The decorations and costumes were designed by Robert Edmond Jones, who graduated from Harvard University. It was the only ballet never seen in Europe.

       The fifth one is Le Sacre du Prin­temps, which was a revolutionary ballet first performed in Paris in 1913. The choreographer of it was Nijinsky, composer was Igor Stravinsky, and designer was Nicholas Roerich. It was only performed for seven times by Nijinsky and later it was performed by new choreographer, Massine.

Le Sacre de Printemps

A Brief Introduction to Vaslav Nijinsky

 Vaslav Nijinsky was a described as the greatest male dancer of the early 20th century.He was born in Ukraine on March 12, 1890. Nijinsky, the legend, was a Russian ballet dancer and choreographer, whose descent was Polish. In the beginning, he was interested in dance for his parents were dancers in an opera company, so he spent most of his early ages exploring art. Nijinsky was offered the chance to study in the Imperial Ballet School in St. Petersburg, and after graduating in 1907 he joined the Imperial Ballet School with starring. He was born in an art family whose parents and siblings were all dancers. 

After working in the Imperial Ballet School for two years, he became a member of the Ballets Russes, starring too. Nijinsky’s performance attracted many fans, they watching his shows there exclusively. Soon Nijinsky expanded his charm to the whole world and became internationally famous. In 1912, he began choreographing his original works. Le Sacre du Printemps became a hit as well as villains. After marriage in 1913, Nijinsky tried to form his own company, which failed later. Nijinsky is seeking transformation. Then he got the offer to take a tour to New York. For he had to manage tours by himself, it’s hard to make balance between tours and dance, which was always in his obsession. And while traveling in South of America in 1917, when it was at the time of WWI, Nijinsky had difficulties continuing traveling. So he and his wife decided to settle in St. Moritz Switzerland. Unfortunately, his health got worse and worse. In 1919 he was diagnosed with schizophrenia. He had to struggle with the disease in the next thirty years, left no dancing to the public. 

                   

                       

                                  

                                     Le Sacre du Printemps

                                          

                                          Nijinsky and His Wife

                               Video: Romola de Pulszky (Nijinsky's wife)