At the grave of Vaslav Nijinsky
Cimitière de Montmartre, Paris, France
October, 2018
I assume that my music- and ballet-loving friends can identify the role, though this sculpture is amateurish compared to the photos of the dancer in this role, which capture Nijinsky's intensity and total identification with the role. It's one of the great mysteries of the 20th century that there's no known film of Nijinsky dancing - I just find it so hard to believe that it never occurred to anyone to point a camera at him. Perhaps there's footage waiting to be found in a Russian archive, or attic.
2 comments:
The following is from the Wikipedia article on Nijinsky:
"Nijinsky is immortalized in numerous still photographs, many of them by E. O. Hoppé, who photographed the Ballets Russes seasons in London extensively between 1909 and 1921. No film exists of Nijinsky dancing; Diaghilev never allowed the Ballets Russes to be filmed because he felt that the quality of film at the time could never capture the artistry of his dancers. He believed that the reputation of the company would suffer if people saw their performance only in the short jerky films of the period."
Big sigh.
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