Nijinsky takes Gotham - News - Vaslav Nijinsky: Creating a New Artistic Era exhibition at New York Public Library

Dance Magazine, Feb, 2003 by Lynn Garafola

Yes, Virginia, another show about Nijinsky. Well, not quite. "Vaslav Nijinsky: Creating a New Artistic Era," which opens at The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts' Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center on February 12, 2003, puts the emphasis back where it belongs--on the dancemaker.

Born in Russia in 1889 and trained at St. Petersburg's Imperial Ballet School, Vaslav Nijinsky became a legend in the early years of the twentieth century. A charter member of Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, he dazzled audiences with his phenomenal technique and artistry. Roles such as the Golden Slave in Scheherazade, the Poet in Les Sylphides, thetragic puppet in Petrouchka, and the airborne androgyne in Le Spectre de la rose were forever marked by the imprint of his personality. He was an international celebrity, photographed by everyone, the first male ballet star to capture the French imagination since the 1830s.

Nijinsky choreographed two legendary works that changed the face of ballet--L'Apres-midi d'un faune (1912), a youthful reverie in the style of a Greek vase that ended with a controversial masturbatory gesture, and Le Sacre du printemps (1913), a pre-Slavic fertility ritual set to the pounding, barbaric rhythms of Igor Stravinsky's famous score that seemed to portend the collapse of civilization itself. Both made headlines, opening ballet to new content and radically new stylistic possibilities. They heralded a new type of ballet choreographer: one defined by the work he created, not the institution employing him, as was the case with the traditional ballet master.

As Diaghilev's lover, Nijinsky was an early gay icon, while, as the victim of severe mental illness, he was a tragic hero, a "clown of God," as he called himself in his Diary, which has never gone out of print. He has inspired books, ballets, movies, plays, and a host of exhibitions. Of the pre-World War I Ballets Russes works that remain in repertoire, all starred or were choreographed by Nijinsky.

"This exhibition focuses on the dancer and choreographer," explains Madeleine Nichols, curator of the Jerome Robbins Dance Division, which put the show together from the library's huge trove of Nijinsky materials. "Other exhibitions emphasize artwork. This one will emphasize photographs."

The New York Public Library owns more than 2,000 Nijinsky photographs, one of the largest collections anywhere. Many, including some of the rarest and most beautiful images, were collected in the 1930s by Roger Pryor Dodge, a jazz dancer and writer. A small but choice selection was reproduced in Lincoln Kirstein's 1975 Nijinsky Dancing, which has been out of print for many years. Together they suggest Nijinsky's enigmatic persona, his distinctive musculature and physicality, compelling stage presence, and magical ability to transform himself into any character he played.

Complementing the photographs will be other library treasures. One is the handwritten, Russian original of Nijinsky's diary, which the Dance Division acquired some years ago at auction. Another is the score of Le Sacre du printemps, with the composer's own markings, a treasure of the library's Music Division. Also included are original costume designs by Robert Edmond Jones for Till Eulenspiegel (1916), Nijinsky's last ballet, which was produced in New York and performed only in the United States.

With approximately 250 objects, this will be a major Nijinsky exhibition. Moreover, with one or two possible exceptions, it will showcase the library's own holdings. Like all public New York institutions, the library has suffered huge cutbacks since September 11. "Vaslav Nijinsky: Creating a New Artistic Era" celebrates not only the greatest of artists but also the resilience of a venerable New York institution.

The exhibition runs through May 3.