The Woman Written from the History of Dance

LA NIJINSKA
Choreographer of the Modern
by Lynn Garafola

It’s gratifying that a biographer and his subject line up as perfectly as the two. Everything in Lynn Garafola’s previous life – authoring a major work on Serge Diaghilev’s Russian Ballets Russes, researching other ballet and modern dance companies, teaching Barnard’s elite dance department for years – has prepared her to take on this challenge. . And for Bronislava Nijinska, Vaslav Nijinsky’s long-neglected sister, this is nothing more than a reenactment. He remained outside the history of ballet, actively participating from 1911 (when his older brother choreographed “L’Après-Midi d’un Faune” on him) to 1970 (when he proposed to re-stage this famous dance for a new young Russian star, Mikhail). Baryshnikov), now brought to life by this first biography.

The reasons for neglect are diverse. His uncompromising nature was undoubtedly a factor, as was the fierce rivalry between ballet choreographers. (As one of her contemporaries put it, “Nijinska hated Balanchine, and Balanchine hated her, and Balanchine hated Massine and Massine both.”) But one reason was precisely because she was a woman. As Garafola emphasizes, the choreographic world Nijinska entered in the early years of the 20th century was purely male. Things could be different in modern dance, where innovators like Mary Wigman and Martha Graham were able to start their own successful companies. But La Nijinska (as she called herself) chose to stay in classical ballet; The mainstream story, from Diaghilev’s Russo-French ensemble to Balanchine’s New York City Ballet, excluded smaller organizations that employed Nijinska. Part of Garafola’s purpose, therefore, is historical as well as biographical, as he wants to rewrite this narrative to include companies such as Polish Ballet, Teatro Colón, Les Ballets de Madame Ida Rubinstein, post-war European productions of the Marquis de Cuevas, and Ballet. Buffalo Center to which Nijinska contributed.

Before becoming a choreographer, Bronia Nijinska was a dancer—first alongside her brother in Diaghilev’s Russian Ballets, and later in companies in Moscow, Kyiv, London, Paris, Vienna, and elsewhere. Official reviews and unofficial accounts show him to be a great artist, lean, expressive and strong. In 1928, when he was in his late 30s, young Frederick Ashton, who was commissioned by Nijinska to join him in Paris, wrote to dance performance Marie Rambert that his jump was “wonderful and gave a sense of what Nijinsky was.” The jump seemed to be of good quality. She is a beautiful dancer and a dancer beyond all her ugliness.” (The incessant references to Nijinska’s ugliness – culminating in an unspeakable passage by Arlene Croce that alludes to her troll-like stature and “Mongolian eyes” – contrasts it oddly with the powerful but certainly not repulsive photographs Garafola contains in the book.) forming features.)

Even Ashton’s warm praise shows what he’s up against. Nijinska was not just a woman, her brother was also a widely recognized genius. (Garafola subtly refers to Virginia Woolf’s article on Shakespeare’s hypothetical sister.) Poor Nijinsky, diagnosed with schizophrenia, had been incarcerated in a mental institution since 1919 and would spend almost the rest of his life there, but these people did not prevent him from comparing his achievements with his. Bronia was devoted to Vaslav: at the happiest and most fulfilling time of her life, she left her Kyiv-based company to join him in a fruitless attempt in Vienna to cure him of mental illness; when you finally wrote his memories late in his life, he presented them as a tribute to his famous brother. But perhaps offended on her part, Garafola won’t let her usurp the story, and it barely appears in these pages between her 1921 visit to Vienna and 1950 when she learns of Nijinska’s death in a London, now living in California. hospital.

We have countless reports and even some movies of Vaslav Nijinsky’s astonishing performances, but what about the dozens of works created by Shakespeare’s sister? For all intents and purposes, they’re pretty much gone. Dances he choreographed for Diaghilev in the 1920s include “The Wedding of Aurora” (derived from “Sleeping Beauty”), “Night on the Bald Mountain” and “Le Train Bleu” to works such as “Brahms Variations”, “Bolero”, “Étude” (to Bach) and “Hamlet” (the last work in which he dances, in which he plays the leading role), Nijinska’s extensive catalog of works is now largely irreversible. Only two key pieces, “Les Noces” (to Strvinsky) and “Les Biches” (to Poulenc), have survived, and this is because Ashton invited them back onstage for the Royal Ballet in the mid-1960s.

Dance is our most ephemeral art. By comparison, literature, painting, and sculpture are practically endless. Even music and theater, although they exist now, can be written down and effectively reconstructed. But the dance disappears as soon as it is performed, and only the careful transfer of each part transferred from one body to another can keep the piece alive and usable. Dance notation has unfortunately proven inadequate, and even savers like film and videotape don’t negate the need for personal training, because the camera doesn’t always look where you want it to: It may be focusing on the center couple’s elevators while you’re doing what you really want. What we need to know is how the feet of the dancers in the background work.

In “La Nijinska,” Garafola brought this problem to a degree that I didn’t think he could handle. Sometimes he relies on the written accounts of his colleagues and critics; he sometimes refers to Nijinska’s own notes and diaries. Sometimes it can conjure up an entire solo from a series of sketches or even a single impressive painting. His explanations of the dances are extremely convincing, and it’s only when you see his masterful analysis of “Les Noces” (a dance he actually saw) that you realize what you’re missing. But even the crumbs are grateful. Like Boswell, who traveled around London checking facts about Samuel Johnson that no one would argue against, Garafola turned every scrap of paper Nijinska passed through, not to mention the hands of her friends and students (often the same people). ).

In fact, Nijinska comes across most strongly in her role as a great teacher. In the 1920s, he was brought to Buenos Aires to shape the embryonic Teatro Colon, working wonders, and the same happened 40 years later when he went to Buffalo to help a new ballet troupe. Ninette de Valois recalled the way she emphasized the “important relationship between breath and movement”; Rosella Hightower recalled that Nijinska repeatedly pressed her fist against Hightower’s back to encourage elongation; and Georgina Parkinson, whom the choreographer chose from the Royal Ballet to play a key role in “Les Biches”, “Nijinska” always… be nice to me, although at first she wasn’t “good enough.” And it finally happened.” Passages like this make us realize the tremendous spirit that was lost in the dance world when Bronislava Nijinska died in 1972 at the age of 81.