Bronislava Nijinska (Polish: Bronis?awa Ni?y?ska; Russian: ??????????? ?????????? ??????????, Bronislava Fominichna Nizhinskaya, Belarusian: ?????????? ?????????); (January 8, 1891 [O.S. December 27, 1890] -- February 21, 1972) was a Polish ballet dancer, and an innovative choreographer. She came of age in a family of professional dancers. Her career started in Saint Petersburg, adventured to Paris, returned to Russia, then crested in France, and continued in Europe and the Americas.
Nijinska played a pioneering role in the movement that diverged from 19th-century classical ballet. The introduction of modern form and motion, and a minimalist narrative, set the stage for neoclassical works to come.
After formal ballet training in Saint Petersburg, which was then the Russian capital, she became an 'Artist of the Imperial Theatres' in 1908. An early breakthrough came in 1910 when she was a member of Diaghilev's Ballets Russes. For her solo Nijinska recreated the role of Papillon in Carnaval, a ballet designed by Fokine.
She assisted her brother Vaslav Nijinsky as he worked up the controversial choreography for L'Après-midi d'un faune, which Ballets Russes premiered in 1912. Similarly, she participated in his 1913 Le Sacre du Printemps.
In Petrograd and Kiev during the great war then revolution, she performed in theaters, created her first choreographies, and started a ballet school. Nijinska also published writings on the art of movement.
In 1921 she rejoined the Ballet Russes in Paris. Diaghilev appointed her choreographer of his influential company. Nijinska thrived, choreographing several cutting-edge ballets to contemporary music. In 1923, with a score by Stravinsky she created her iconic work Les Noces [The Wedding].
Starting in 1925, with a variety of companies, including her own, she designed and mounted ballets in Europe and the Americas. Among them: Teatro Colón, Ida Rubinstein, Opéra Russe à Paris, Wassily de Basil, Max Reinhardt, Markova-Dolin, Ballet Polonaise, Ballet Theatre, the Hollywood Bowl, Serge Denham, Marquis de Cuevas.
In 1939 following the start of war in Europe, she relocated from Paris to Los Angeles. Nijinska continued working in choreography and as artistic director. She taught at her studio. During the 1960s for The Royal Ballet in London she held revivals of her earlier, Ballets Russes-era creations. Her Early Memoirs, translated into English, was published posthumously.
Maps, Directions, and Place Reviews
Early life
Bronislava Nijinska was the third child of the Polish dancers Tomasz [Foma] Nijinsky and Eleonora Nijinska (maiden name Bereda), who were then traveling performers in provincial Russia. Bronislava was born in Minsk, but all three children were baptized in Warsaw. She was the younger sister of Vaslav Nijinsky, the renowned ballet star.
A family of dancers
Each of their parents had begun dancing careers in Warsaw at the Teatr Wielki. When they later met each was already a ballet professional with the Setov troupe based in Kiev. The troupe performed in provincial capitals of the then Russian Empire. They were married in Baku. Tomasz, five years younger, had risen to be premier danseur and ballet master. His wife Eleonora, orphaned at seven, had followed her elder sister into ballet, and was then dancing as a first soloist.
Tomasz Nijinsky, using his abilities as a ballet master, came to manage his own small troupe of a dozen dancers, plus students. In 1896 her father staged the Fountain of Bakhchisarai a ballet pantomime in Circus-Theaters, using Polish and Russian music. Her mother Eleonora danced the role of a captured princess. Tomasz choreographed "two very successful ballets" namely the above Fountains of Bakhchisara and Zaporozbeskaya Tcharovnitza. Nijinska implies that their small troupe prospered, but that is questioned. In addition to renting out theaters, Tomasz contracted to perform at Café Chantants, popular nightspots where patrons dined while being entertained with music and dance. The family was surrounded by artists at work and at home. Her father "loved to be with painters, writers, actors, and musicians."
In the past Tomasz had forgone opportunities, turning down dance offers because of his family. In 1897 near Saint Petersburg, Eleonora and Thomasz danced on stage together for the last time. He continued on the road as a dancer. On a prior trip to Finland, he had become involved with a fellow dancer. It led to separation from his wife, and the dissolution of his marriage. Eleonora soon established permanent residence in Saint Petersburg for her three children, after years of continual travel. Bronislava records that her brother Vaslav (or Vatsa) became bitter and years later turned against his father for the pain his mother endured.
Her brother Vatsa
"By nature Vaslav [Vatsa] was a very lively and adventurous boy." In her book Early Memoirs Nijinska writes about the adventures of young Vatsa, older than her by 22 months. Living with a mother and father who regularly danced on stage, the children acquired an intrepid attitude and a physical prowess in everyday life. The parents encouraged their children's athletic development and, while scolding misbehavior, were not punitive. Curiosity drove Vatsa to explore the neighborhoods, sometimes crossing parental lines. His bravery and daring on rooftops impressed Broni.
"How Vatsa loved to climb! Whenever he was at the top of a tree, on a high post, on the swing, or on the roof of our house, I noticed a rapturous delight on his face, a delight to feel his body high above the ground, suspended in midair."
Vatsa fearlessly investigated the strange streets of different towns and cities where the family's theatrical life took them. Along the way he'd trained his body, which became an instrument of extraordinary strength and balance. He relished his freedom. His mind took innovative turns. Vatsa often invited Broni, who sometimes accompanied him. From Vatsa's adventures she, too, acquired early skills useful for a dancer.
Childhood dance skills
Her parents not only were continually dancing in theatrical productions, they also taught ballroom dancing to adults and had special dance classes for children. From an early age they instructed their daughter in folk dances: Polish, Hungarian, Italian, and Russian. She learned ballet, together with all kinds of different dance steps. She picked up some acrobatic techniques from her father, who sometimes worked adjacent to circus performers. Later she was able to draw on this rich experience in her choreographic works.
Broni Nijinska was not quite four when she made her theatrical debut in a Christmas pageant with her brothers in Nizhny Novgorod. She grew familiar with being on stage. Joining her brothers she trained to dance and act in children's productions, or to make brief appearances on the adult stage. Her aunt Stepha, her mother's elder sister, had retired from performance but was teaching dance in Vilno; she helped Broni. Dancers who knew her parents would give her lessons or tips. After their parents' separation, her brother Vaslav Nijinsky entered the Imperial Theatrical School. When about nine years old, Broni began ballet lessons with the famous Enrico Cecchetti who quickly recognized her skills.
Imperial Theatrical School
In 1900, Bronislava Nijinska was accepted into the same state-sponsored school for performing arts. Her brother Vaslav had entered it two years before. Located in Saint Petersburg, it offered a program meant to continue for many years. As with Vaslav's acceptance, her mother enlisted support from various people connected to ballet, including Stanilas Gillert and Cecchetti. There were 214 candidates who appeared at the entrance examination to demonstrate their dance abilities. Legendary ballet master Marius Petipa participated, as did Cecchetti and Legat. Twelve girls were accepted.
Bronislava graduated in 1908, taking 'First Award' for achievement both in dance and in academic subjects. Seven women graduated that year. In addition to her diploma she was enlisted as an 'Artist of the Imperial Theatre' which assured her financial security and the privileged life of a professional dancer.
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Career as a dancer
Mariinsky Theater in Saint Petersburg 1908-1911
In 1908, Nijinska was admitted to the Imperial Ballet (then also known as the Mariinsky Ballet and later known as the Kirov Ballet) following in her brother's footsteps. In the corps de ballet her first year, she performed in Michel Fokine's Les Sylphides. Under his gaze and leadership, she was able to directly experience Fokine's choreographic vision of this master on the cutting-edge. Both she and Nijinsky, however, left Russia during the summers of 1909 and 1910 to perform for Diaghilev's company in Paris.
Nijinska danced with the Mariinsky Ballet for three years. Yet the growth and insights acquired at Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, which was then unexpectedly revolutionizing the ballet world, clearly exceeded that at Mariinsky Theater. Then, suddenly, she felt compelled to resign after the Theater's dismissal of her brother Vaslav, chiefly regarding his star performances in Paris. As a result, Nijinska was deprived of her rights respecting the title 'Artist of the Imperial Theaters' and its associated privileges.
Sergei Diaghlev, 'Ballets Russes' 1909-1913
Nijinska appeared in the Sergei Pavlovitch Diaghilev's first two Paris seasons, 1909 and 1910. After leaving the Mariinsky, she became a permanent member of his newly formed company, Ballets Russes.
Dance roles and character creations
Nijinska danced initially in the corps de ballet of Ballets Russes. She performed in, e.g., Swan Lake (the Czardas), Les Sylphides (Mazurka), and Le Spectre de la Rose. As she developed on the professional stage she was given significant roles, including Papillon and the Ballerina Doll. Her brother helped her create innovations for her presentation of Papillon in Fokine's Carnaval (1910). The role of the Ballerina Doll in Petruchka (1911) was transformed. She modernized it, by employing a realism in her approach. The demeanor was altered to become more street normal, and she continually kept in character rather than quickly resuming the default look of classical ballet. The dance of the Bayadere Enivree in Le Dieu Bleu she did, but did not care for. She became the lone Odalisque in Scheherazade.
In the 1912 production of Cleopatra, she at first danced the Bacchanale (replacing Vera Fokine). Then she was awarded Karsavina's role of Ta-Hor. "Karsavina danced the role on toe, but I would dance it in my bare feet." She used a liquid body make-up. For her Ta-Hor she received treasured compliments from other artists, for her ballet and also her dramatic interpretation. The next year she performed in her brother's Jeux (Games). Nijinska had assisted her brother Vaslav in his creation of the ballet Le Sacre du printemps (Rite of Spring) which premiered in 1913. Particularly for the Chosen Maiden role, she'd carefully follow Nijinsky's instructions as to movement and pose, as the ballet choreography developed. Yet when she became aware of her pregnancy, she told him she'd have to withdraw and miss its opening performance, angering her brother.
Of her brother Vaslav Nijinsky
It is argued that Bronislava Nijinska's brother Vaslav Nijinsky had the greatest influence on her. In Nijinska's memoir, she speaks of the overwhelming curiosity Vaslav possessed from a young age. His low performance in school is recorded; Nijinska attributes this to his disinterest and impatience. He instead wanted to explore the world and test his physical limits. He became an incredible dancer. At Mariinsky Theater and at Ballets Russes, too, Vaslav quickly rose. Soon Vaslav was performing as principal dancer.
"As his pupil she became the first person to know and be influenced by his radically new ideas regarding dance and his desire to substitute a rigorously stylized form of movement for the classical ballet tradition."
She describes his innovations in creating a new Blue Bird role for the ballet The Sleeping Princess in 1907: how he changed the restrictive costume and energized the movements. When Nijinsky created "L'Après-midi d'un Faune" [Afternoon of the Faun] in 1912 he used Nijinska to rehearse it in secret, to follow with her body his description of the steps one by one. She similarly assisted him in creating Le Sacre du Printemps [Rite of Spring]. Due to her pregnancy, Nijinska withdrew from the part of the Chosen Maiden. It was during a 1913 South American tour that Nijinsky controversially married Romola de Pulszky. If Nijinska had been on tour, it might have been different. She explains in her memoirs that Vaslav was very reserved and, other than herself, had few close colleagues or collaborators in the dance world.
"Although Bronislave Nijinska is often identified as the sister of the celebrated Vaslav Nijinsky, she was a major artist in her own right and a key figure in the development of twentieth-century ballet.
Her break with Diaghilev
When her brother married in 1913, Diaghilev terminated his position at Ballets Russes. In solidarity Nijinska then also left the company. Nijinska speculated that hidden manipulations had motivated events, whereby Diaghilev had secured financing and the return of Fokine by getting rid of her brother Nijinsky. The break left emotional scars, and a sense of betrayal. Yet Diaghilev continued to admire her and her work, and offered her opportunities in ballet.
Nijinska had left the Ballet Russes. She elected to follow her brother Vaslav after Diaghilev dismissed him from the company over artistic quarrels, his military draft status, his September, 1913, marriage in Buenos Aires, and his demand for payments in arrears.
'Saison Nijinsky' in London 1914
In early 1914 Vaslav Nijinsky, with Bronislava's later assistance, started a new ballet company in London: Saison Nijinsky. Yet Nijinska learned there was only a short time to prepare for its premiere performance. Vaslav had signed a contract to open at a dance hall, the London Palace Theatre, in four and a half weeks (March 2). Nijinska quickly decided to return to Russia to recruit the cast, but Warsaw was where the experienced dancers were found. She with others explained her brother's innovative choreographies. She directed rehearsals, as musicians and scores, sets and costumes were arranged.
Nijinska herself was to perform, e.g., with Vaslav in Le Spectre de la rose. Its anticipated premiere was well received. Vaslav's brilliant dancing drew prolonged applause. After performing for two weeks, however, a business dispute developed. It arose when Nijinsky became sick and unable to perform for a few days. It led the theater owner Alfred Butt to cancel the company's season. Nijinsky managed to pay his dancers. Some attributed the company's downfall to Vaslav's erratic emotional tendencies, which had intensified after his recent marriage and his dismissal from Ballets Russes.
Dance performances 1915-1934
In Petrograd, Kiev, Moscow: until 1921
After Saison Nijinsky, Bronislava returned to Russia. She continued her ballet career as danseuse, with Sasha her husband as the danseur. During the war and then the revolution, she went on stage in experimental works as well as in classics. In Petrograd the 1915 theatre program listed "ballet by the prima ballerina-artist of the State Ballet Bronislava Nijinska". The program included music by Tchaikovsky, Mussorgsky, and Borodin. She performed in her own choreographed solos, Le Poupee or Tabatierr, and Autumn Song. Her dance savvy was lauded.
In Kiev in addition to dancing, she established her ballet school and began to choreograph programs. She danced in solos while costumed in tunics, e.g., Etudes (Liszt), Mephisto Valse (Liszt), Nocturnes (Chopin), Preludes (Chopin), Fear or Horror (in silence, costume by Exter), and in company performances, e.g., Twelfth Rhapsody (Liszt), Demons (Tcherepnine), March Funebre (Chopin). In 1921 she left Russia, never to return.
With Ballet Russes in France: to 1924 [1926]
Rejoining Ballets Russes, Nijinska worked in Diaghilev's ill-starred 1921 revival of the Petipa's classic The Sleeping Princess. Although a money loser, its was popular, and well designed and danced. Nijinska performed the roles of the Hummingbird Fairy and Pierette, for which she received "high critical praise".
In 1922, following a personal request by Diaghilev, she performed the title role in Nijinsky's L'Après-midi d'un Faune during its Paris revival. She had helped her brother with its choreography for its 1912 premier. "Vaslav is creating his Faune by using me as his model. I am like a piece of clay that he is molding... ." Yet these appearance became clearly auxiliary to her new, 'second career' working as the choreographer.
From 1922 to 1924 with Ballets Russes, Nijinska nonetheless took prominent roles in many of her own dance designs. Accordingly, she performed as the Fox in Le Renard (1922), as the Hostess in Les Biches (1924), as Lysandre in Les Fâcheux (1924), and as the Tennis Player in Le Train Bleu (1924).
With companies in Europe and the Americas
Subsequently, for her own ballet companies and for others, she danced in roles of her own inventions: in Holy Etudes, Touring, Le Guignol, and Night on Bald Mountain (all 1925); for Teatro Colón in Estudios religiosos (1926); in her Capricio Espagnole per Rimsky-Korsakoff in 1931; and in the 1934 ballet based on Hamlet per Liszt: the title role. She performed into the 1930s, at venues in Europe and the Americas.
As Nijinska reached her forties, her performance career neared its end. What caused her trouble, and hastened the close of her performance art, was an injury to her Achilles tendon suffered in 1933 while at Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires.
Appraisals, critiques
Her qualities as a dancer, of course, are distinct from her more celebrated choreography. Comments by several professional colleagues were collected by the New York ballet critic and author Lynn Garafola:
"She was a very strong dancer, and danced very athletically for a lady, and had a big jump," commented Frederic Franklin, a dancer and ballet master. "She had incredible endurance, and seemed never to be tired," recalled Anatole Vilzak, who was a principal dancer in many of her mature choreographies. English dancer Lydia Sokolova, noting her lack of makeup, thought she appeared "a most unfeminine woman, though there was nothing particularly masculine about her character. Thin but immensely strong, she had iron muscles in her arms and legs, and her highly developed calf muscles resembled Vaslav's; she had the same way of jumping and pausing in the air." Alicia Markova, a prima ballerina absoluta of Britain, concluded that Nijinska "was a strange combination, this terrific strength, and yet there was a softness."
The composer Igor Stravinsky, to whose music she created several fine choreographic works, wrote that "Bronislava Nijinska, sister of the famous dancer [is] herself an execellent dancer endowed with a profoundly artistic nature." After helping her brother Vaslav for many months in his laborious design of the 1913 ballet Le Sacre du Printemps (music by Stravinsky), she found she'd become pregnant. She could not then take to the stage to perform the star role as the sacrificial maiden. Frustrated, Vaslav then screamed at her, "There is no one to replace you. You are the only one who can perform this dance, only you, Bronia, and no one else!"
Nancy Van Norman Baer in her book on Nijinska writes, "Between 1911 and 1913, while [her brother] Nijinsky's fame continued to soar, Nijinska emerged as a strong and talented dancer." Author and critic Robert Greskovic describes a common understanding of her gifts, "Nowhere near the beauty and exemplar of her art that Pavlova and Spessivtseva were, Bronislava Nijinska (1891-1972) instead began to make her mark as a choreographer."
Nonetheless Nijinska must have truly excelled as a dancer. Before her brother's legendary skills overshadowed her own, her prowess on the dance floor when only a young student had been recognized by top professionals. "If Marius Petipa patted her approvingly on the head and Enrico Cecchetti placed her, at age eight, front and center in his class between two prima ballerinas, she must have been good." The editor of The Dancing Times wrote of her at Ballets Russes, her 1921 performance in The Sleeping Princess:
"Nijinska... appeals to me as the most versatile dancer of the entire company. Her technique in her classical numbers is beyond reproach... and her mime and personality in the demi-charactère dances are most convincing."
An early signature of hers was a tough "virility". "Her own roles were packed with jumps and beats." Much later, in her prime, Nijinska crafted to combine her strength with an emotional touch "unexpectedly poignant". She liked the flow of movement on the stage.
As a choreographer
"In her lifetime Nijinska choreographed over seventy ballets, as well as dance sequences for numerous films, operas, and other stage productions." An annotated, chronological catalogue of her choreographies is presented by Nancy Van Norman Baer in her book on Nijinska. Her early experiences in choreographic arts involved the assistance given her brother Vaslav Nijinsky in his choreographic works for Ballets Russes. She had then tried out the initial stages of various steps created by him.
In Russia during war and revolution
Petrograd, her first choreographies 1915-1916
At the start of World War I, Nijinska, her husband Aleksandr Kochtovsky ('Sasha', married in 1912), and their infant daughter Nina returned to Petrograd (the Russian capital's new name). They both became leading dancers at the Petrograd Private Opera Theatre. In 1915 Nijinska produced her first choreographies: Le Poupée [The Doll], and Autumn Song. These creations were for her solo performances at the Narodny Dom Theatre.
She was twenty-five. The 1915 program described her as "the celebrated prima ballerina-artist of the State Ballet". The music for her dance creation Autumn Song was by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, and for The Doll by Anatoly Liadov. On that program, performed at the Narodny Dom [People's House], were also ballets choreographed by Michel Fokine of Ballets Russes, to be danced by Nijinska and her husband. Her choreography for Autumn Song, "the more important" of her two solos, "owed a debt to Fokine". The ballet's choreography was not lost. In the 1930s Nijinska taught it to Alicia Markova who in 1953 performed Autumn Song for television.
Kiev 1916-1921, her 'Ecole du Mouvement'
In 1916 Nijinska with her young family moved to Kiev. Her husband 'Sasha' Kochtovsky became ballet master at the State Opera Theater. There they both worked staging divertissements and ballets. In 1917 Nijinska began teaching at several institutions: the State Conservatory of Music, Central State Ballet Studio, the Yiddish Cultural Center Drama Studio, and the Ukrainian Drama School.
Treatise on choreography
Nijinska's "theoretical speculations" about modern ballet apparently began to crystallize. During a brief trip to Moscow shortly after the 1917 October Revolution, Nijinska started her treatise: The School of Movement (Theory of Choreography). It was published in 1920 but has become lost to posterity, like much of the dance materials she created in Kiev. A 1930 essay, however, recapitulates her key ideas: "On movement and the school of movement". Baer observes, "It is in this essay that she documents her search for a new means of expression based on the extension of the classical vocabulary of dance steps."
"The action of movement should be continuous, otherwise its life is interrupted. ... In choreography, transition should be movement. ... [T]he position of the body must be the result created by movement. ... [C]horeographic movement must have its own organic being (different in each composition), its own breathe and rhythm. ... The artist, especially of the dance, must perfectly see and know movement in its entire nature, must work the movement as the material of his art."
Collaboration with designer Exter
Nijinska met the visual artist Alexandra Exter in 1917 in Moskva. Exter's cutting-edge designs employed constructivist ideas. The two talked and traded their views on art. It began a fruitful collaboration on theater projects such as dance productions. The working relationship that formed endured into the 1920s, after each independently left Russia, to move to Paris.
Before the war Exter had lived in Western Europe, where she joined "cubist and futurist circles" that were generating well-known innovations. Returning to Russia at war's start, Exter first settled in Moscow. With Alexander Tairov at his Kamerny [Chamber] Theater, she had "aspired to create a dynamic fusion of drama, movement, and design known as 'synthetic theater'." In 1918, having relocated to Kiev, Exter opened an art studio, which doubled as a salon for many of Kiev's rising artists.
Art discussions were also held evenings at Nijinska's dance school, where Exter joined in. Their ideas were compatible and mutually reinforcing. Curator/author Nancy Van Norman Baer writes that they became "close artistic associates" and "fast friends".
Her ballet school & its productions
In February 1919 in Kiev, she opened her dance school called L'Ecole de Mouvement [School of Movement]. This was shortly after giving birth to her son Léon. Her training philosophy focused on preparing dancers to work with innovative choreographers such as her brother Vaslav. She taught her students: flowing movement, free use of the torso, and a quickness in linking steps.
"Today's ballet schools do not give the dancer the necessary training to work with choreographic innovators. Even the Ballet Russes... did not create a school to parallel its innovations in the theater." [86/87] Vigano, Noverre, Vestris, Didelot, Taglioni, Coralli, Petipa: "the danse d'ecole absorbed all the achievements of these choreographers. ... [They] did not destroy the school with their innovations, but only enriched it."
Under the aegis of this school she staged concerts with solo dances. Included were "her first plotless ballet compositions": Mephisto Valse (1919), and Twelfth Rhapsody (1920). These solo dances may be "the first abstract ballets" of the 20th century. Nijinska at her school also produced a full theatrical production of the Tchaikovsky ballet Swan Lake, using the classic Petipa choreography.
[Kiev section in process]
Diaghilev's 'Ballets Russes' in France 1921-1925
Throughout the duration of his control of his company Diaghilev, who died in 1929, chiefly worked with five choreographers: Fokine, Nijinsky, Massine, Nijinska, Balanchine. 1921 until 1925 was Nijinska's time at the helm.
Initial work for the company
In 1921, Nijinska was asked by Diaghilev to return to Ballet Russes, this time as a choreographer. Following the war, Diaghilev learned that Nijinska in Kiev in 1919 had staged Marius Petipa's classic Swan Lake, music by Tchaikovsky. She was in line to be the Company's first and only female choreographer, as well as principal dancer, and ballet mistress. Diaghilev being cautious remained a little uncertain of her work; he decided to first assign her specific tasks to test her ability.
As theatrical events had unfolded, Ballets Russes was then faced with a severe financial problem. It arose out of its lavish London production of the celebrated 1890s ballet The Sleeping Princess originally staged by Petipa, to music by Tchaikovsky. In consequence Nijinska, sometimes working directly with Diaghilev, reworked parts of the ballet, turning the traditional, but unprofitable, three-act version into a viable one-act affair, entitled Aurora's Wedding.
In addition, Les Contes de Fées is another spinoff from The Sleeping Princess, and is also known as fairy tales from Aurora's Wedding. It premiered in February 1925. In these three Nijinska has minor choreography credit after Marius Petipa: The Sleeping Princess (1921 London), and its one-act spin off Aurora's Wedding (1922 Paris). [under construction]
The Sleeping Princess, originally La Belle au bois dormant (1921)
This ballet, most often now called The Sleeping Beauty, was "one of the great Petipa classics from the old Imperial Russian repertory, La Belle au bois dormant [The beauty in woods asleep]." Based on a French fairy tale of that name by Charles Perrault, its music was by Tchaikovsky. In 1921 Diaghilev had revived the Petipa choreography in three acts. Leon Bakst designed the sets which "were of surpassing grandeur and magnificence and no expense was spared... ."
The choreographic credit went to Petipa, with "Additional choreography by Bronislava Nijinska". Most memorable: to the grand divertissement she added the rousing hopak for the 'Three Ivans', which "became one of the most popular numbers". To The Sleeping Princess Nijinska contributed a half-dozen other, well-crafted choreographic pieces (e.g., "The Marquises", "Blue Beard", "Schéhérazade", "Variations of Prince Charming"). She made other changes, and led the rehearsals for the ballet. The Sleeping Beauty "became a proving ground of Nijinska's choreographic talent. She acquitted herself admirably... ." Nijinska also was a principal dancer in the ballet, taking roles as the Hummingbird Fairy, the Lilac Fairy, and Pierrette.
Diaghilev's decision to revive an 1890 classic in London in 1921 constituted a large financial risk. He aimed for a show of high production values despite the expense. After viewing The Sleeping Princess many critics were skeptical, disappointed by the apparent retreat from an experimental approach previously associated with Ballets Russes. In fact, the Russian art world in the early twentieth century was often experimental. For a few years even after the 1917 revolution, artists operated largely independent of Soviet politicians. Diaghilev's classic did prove very popular with London's growing audience for ballet. Yet they could not buy enough tickets to cover its great expense. After a run of several months, attendance began to fall. By early 1922 the truly brilliant production had become a collosal, money-losing disaster.
In 1921 Nijinska had arrived at Ballets Russes in London from the harsh realities of "Russia in revolution". Her artist taste clearly preferred the pre-war Diaghilev who had been "searching for the creation of a new ballet... ." Yet The Sleeping Princess was her first assignment. She would write later that Diaghilev's revival "seemed to me an absurdity, a dropping into the past". Nijinska felt the tension: "I started my first work full of protest against myself."
Over the course of her career, however, Nijinska seems to have neither fully crossed over to champion rebel experiments, nor would she ever accept as timelessly classic the inherited ballet tradition. Although strongly embracing new ideas about the art of movement, she eventually took a middle path where tradition reconciled with modern innovation.
Aurora's Wedding or Le Marriage de la Belle au bois dormant (1922)
Nijinska was key to the creation of this ballet in one act. It was a strategic selection, a quasi miniature of the longer, three-act ballet The Sleeping Beauty. The longer ballet's 1921 London production, however grand, after running three months, was not making a profit (see above). To rescue his investment in costumes and sets Diaghilev, with the collaboration of Stravinsky and Nijinska, "salvaged only a one-act ballet, which he called Aurora's Wedding." Yet it proved very popular. For decades the shorter ballet remained in the repertory of Ballet Russes.
For Aurora's Wedding Nijinska shared choreograhic credit with Petipa's 1890 original grand ballet. The costumes and decor were by Benois (from a 1909 production) and by Gontcharova (new), because those for The Sleeping Beauty had been impounded in London. Aurora's May 1922 premiere was in Paris at Théâtre National de l'Opéra. It's principal dancers were Vera Trefilova as Princess Aurora and Pierre Vladimirov as Prince Charming. Nijinska also performed per her dancing in The Sleeping Beauty.
La Fête Merveilleuse of 1923 was largely excerpted from her Aurora's Wedding. It was a "gala benefit pageant" of Ballets Russes performed in the Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of Versailles. The well-heeled audience came from all over Europe as well as America. Tchaikovsky's music was reorchestrated by Stravinsky, and the costumes were by Juan Gris.
Les Contes de Fées [Stories of the fairies] (1925)
Les Contes de Fées is a ballet drawn from the fairy tales in Aurora's Wedding and originally seen in Act III of La Belle au bois dormant. It premiered February, 1925, in Monte Carlo.
Her own ballet creations
Nijinska earned her credits as the sole choreographer for nine works at Ballets Russes during the 1920s. Eight are discussed here in this section. For Romeo and Juliet (1926) see below. All but one were set to modern musical compositions: three by Igor Stravinsky (two ballets, Renard, Noces, and an opera, Mavra), one each by Francis Poulenc (Biches), Georges Auric (Fâcheux), Modest Mussorgsky (Nuit, an opera), and Darius Milhaus (Train Bleu). One work employed baroque music (Tentations). Music for the Shakespeare play was by Constant Lambert.
Le Renard [The Fox] [Baika] (1922)
Nijinska's first ballet in her tentative new position as choreographer for Ballets Russes was Le Renard, described as a "burlesque ballet with song". Igor Stravinsky composed the music, which was for small orchestra and four singers. Stravinsky also wrote the libretto, i.e., the lyrics. Originally commissioned by a friend of Diaghilev in 1915, it was not publicly performed until 1922.
The principal dancers were: Nijinska (as the Fox), Stanislas Idzikowski (as the Cock), Jean Jazvinsky and Micel Federov (as the Cat, and the Goat). Costumes and sets by Michel Larionov were in a type of radical, modernist style with a "primitive quality".
The plot comes from "Russian preliterary theater" sourced in "a tradition of itinerant folk entertainers" impersonating buffoons and animals. The Fox (a con-artist) works to trick the Cock (a wealthy peasant) in order to literally eat him, but the Cock is saved by the Cat and Goat. "Disguised first as a nun, then as a beggar, the fox embodies criticism of both social and clerical orders." Baika was the original Russian title of Le Renard.
Nijinska's choreography tended modern. She "juxtaposed movements of animal grace with odd gestures and grotesque postures." The ballet was narrated by singers off stage. Larionov's visual design included simple animal masks for the dancers; the name of each character, e.g., "Goat", was written in large letters on the dance costume.
In her memoirs, Nijinska discusses Fokine's innovative "Dance of the Fauns" (1905). There in the background the many "fauns looked like animals". The young boys who danced them once "tumbled head over heels" which was not in keeping with 'classical ballet' techniques. Yet Fokine claimed the result conformed to the "animal characteristics of the dance." Nijinska then comments:
"I, who always spoke against the use of acrobatics in the ballet, made use of somersaults in my very first ballet, Stravinsky's Le Renard (1922). But there was no contradiction. I did not use those steps as a trick but to achieve an artistic aim."
Although Le Renard was ill-received and seldom performed, Stravinsky's harsh music and the childlike costumes were suspected. Yet the ballet had "impeccable avant-garde credentials." "Diaghilev was pleased with Nijinska's work and engaged her as the permanent choreographer for his company." Stravinsky, too, was pleased. He wrote in his 1936 Chronicles of my life:
"I still deeply regret that the production [Le Renard] which gave me the greatest satisfaction... has never been revived. Nijinska had admirably seized the spirit of mountebank buffoonery. She displayed such a wealth of ingenuity, so many fine points, so much satirical verve, that the effect was irresistible."
The premiere of this burlesque ballet also inspired an interesting social event. It was "a first night supper party for Le Renard", planned by Sydney Schiff as a kind of "modernist summit". Invited were "Proust and Joyce in literature, Stravinsky in music, Picasso in painting." Garafola comments that only in these years of Diaghilev "would ballet stand so close to the avant-garde."
Mavra (1922)
An "opéra bouffe" with music by Stravinsky, it was first performed at the Théâtre National de l'Opéra in Paris, June 1922. The lyric book by Boris Kochno followed a poem by Pushkin, 'A small house in Kolomna'. "The one-act opera did not require any dances, but Diaghilev did ask Nijinska to stage the movement of the four singers."
Les Noces [The Wedding] [Svadebka] (1923)
Nijinska created the ballet Les Noces ['The Wedding' [original title Les Noces Villageoise, in Russian Svadebka]) from the music and libretto by Igor Stravinsky, music commissioned ten years earlier by Diaghilev. The 24-minute ballet depicts the rural marriage ceremony of Russian peasants. Dancers first learning the steps often meet some difficulty with the intense group movements of the choreography. "When you are truly moving together your individuality is really evident." The light-hearted sense of folk dance was abandoned. A realism of revolution has seasoned Nijinska's sober observations of tradition and society, yet there slumbers a vision. The collective mood of predestination is countered by hints at a peasant's wit of survival. After first seeing it, H. G. Wells wrote:
The ballet Les Noces is "a rendering in sound and vision of the peasant soul, in its gravity, in its deliberate and simple-minded intricacy, in its subtly varied rhythms, in its deep undercurrents of excitement... ."
Stravinsky's idea for the score evolved during war, revolution, and exile. His libretto conveys ancient and set patterns, yet his music uses staccato rhythms and a vocal overlay of upheaval. Left little expressed is the wedding as a reassuring joy. The tone of the work is darker, more anxious, conjuring a "deeply moving evocation" of the ceremony. Although his lyrics were taken from folk songs of Russian weddings, the vocals are almost chanted. Stravinsky's composition, while fluid and layered, at times becomes overtly jarring. In form it's a cantata, the "music accompanying his choral and solo singers came from an orchestra of percussion, dominated by four pianos."
The minimalist visual designs, both the costumes and the sets, were by Natalia Goncharova, the color scheme being "earthen gold, blue-grey, and black." Yet "the fanciful, colorful costumes she first proposed struck Nijinska as wrong". Then Goncharova is said to have modified to Russian style the clothes worn by dancers to rehearsals. Balanchine's practical dance clothes for performances "can trace precedents back to Noces." In the end, Goncharova's sparse sets and costume design are now "inseparable from the ballet's musical and movement elements."
Nijinska researched ethnological studies of peasant customs in Russia. Yet in boldly translating to the ballet stage, she seems to follow Stravinsky's modern score. She directed the women to dance en pointe, in order to elongate their silhouettes and resemble Russian icons, writes critic Robert Greskovic. The beating sound of pointe shoes jabbing the boards gives power to the dancing (far from the wispy, ethereal effect previously associated with dancing en pointe). Nijinska's groupings of women move largely in unison. The corps often faces square to the audience, a departure from the "epaulement" found in classical works, which softens the look by angling the shoulders. Toward the end of scene one, the women handle extremely long braids of the bride's hair, greatly exaggerated in thickness, as if the women were "sailors taking up the mooring lines of a boat." The whole piece, tethered to an ancient folk tradition, has an overwhelming sense of a controlled conformity.
An iconic pose from Les Noces has the heads of the women dancers, i.e., the bridesmaids, as if stacked up. Author Jennifer Homans, in defining the ballet's tragedy, comments:
"In one of the ballet's most poignant and telling images, the women dutifully pile their faces like bricks on top of one another, forming an abstract, pyramid structure... . The bride sets her face on the top and rests her head despondently in her hands. We see both the individuals (those faces) and their submission to authority and the group..."
"Les Noces was Nijinska's answer to Sacre," a creative continuation of her brother's work, here "a reenactment of a Russian peasant wedding." It was "not a joyous occasion but a foreboding social ritual in which feelings were strictly contained and limited by ceremonial forms." Nijinska, however, escaped from her brother's nihilism by following Stravinsky's lead "through the formal beauty and discipline of the Orthodox liturgy." Nonetheless the ballet remained "a modern tragedy, a complicated and very Russian drama that celebrated authority" yet showed its "brutal effect on the lives of individuals."
Dance academic and critic Lynn Garafola, in discussing ballet in the early 1920s, describes Diaghilev's competition. She notes that Ballets suédois (Swedish ballet) led by Rolf de Maré had "largely succeeded in edging Diaghilev to the sidelines of avant-garde Paris." Garafola mentions her admiration for the 1922 ballet Le Renard (see above) created by Nijinska for Ballets Russes. She continues:
"[I]t was only in 1923 that Diaghilev staged a modernist masterpiece that transcended the best of his rival's offerings. Les Noces, probably the greatest dance work of the decade, teamed three of his closest Russian collaborators: Stravinsky, his 'first son', as composer; Natalia Goncharova, as designer; and Bronislava Nijinska, as choreographer."
"Bronislava Nijinska's Les noces [grew] out of boldness of conception without regard for precedent or consequences," wrote John Martin, dance critic for The New York Times. Nijinska herself wrote about Noces: "I was informed as a choreographer [by my brother's ballets] Jeux and Le Sacre du Printemps. The unconscious art of those ballets inspired my initial work."
Les Tentations de la Bergère [Temptations of the shepherdess] (1924)
This one-act ballet featured baroque music composed by Michel de Montéclair (1667-1737), which was recently orchestrated by Henri Casadesus. The sets, costumes, and curtain were by Juan Gris. An alternative title is L'Amour Vainqueur [Love Victorious]. It opened in Monte Carlo.
In the mid-1920s "a significant part of the Ballet Russes repertory turned away from modernism and themes of contemporary life." This included Les Tentations de la Bergère and the ballet Les Fâcheux, also choreographed by Nijinska. These were "two works produced by the Ballets Russes during the 1920s that focused on themes related to eighteenth-century France. These productions were rooted in France's post-World War I fascination with bygone monarchies and court life."
Les Biches [The Does, or The Hinds] (1924), also called The House Party
A one-act ballet with songs, Les Biches [original title 'Les Demoiselles'] depicts a house party, with music for 'entertainment' by Francis Poulenc. The scenery and costumes were by the 'fashionable' cubist painter Marie Laurencin. Poulenc's music, which originally included singing of lyrics, was a "wonderful chameleon of a score", that was "mischievous, mysterious, now sentimental, now jazzy, now Mozartian... ."
Its January 1924 opening at the Théâtre de Monte Carlo featured a cast of "La Nijinska herself" and, among others, a minor role for Ninette de Valois who later became director at Sadler's Wells Ballet. Latter several English-speaking ballet companies changed the title, e.g., The House Party or The Gazelles. The French title Les Biches signifies female deer (the plural of doe), which was "1920s terminology for young women; [it] celebrates ballet women as chic young ladies."
"Although Diaghilev to Poulenc praised Nijinska to the heavens... [he] feared she might be unresponsive to the Latin charm of the Poulenc score." Her first three choreographies for Ballet Russe had been composed by Stravinsky (Renard, Mavra, Noces). Yet "Poulenc and Nijinska had taken to each other enormously... ." During rehearsals, Poulenc remarked that "Nijinska is really a genius" and her choreography's "pas de deux is so beautiful that all the dancers insist on watching it. I am enchanted." Diaghilev concluded:
"Poulenc is enthusiastic about Bronya's (Nijinska's) choreography, and they get along excellently together. The choreography has delighted and astonished me. But then, this good woman, intemperate and antisocial as she is, does belong to the Nijinsky family."
Nijinska took the role of the hostess of the house party. The ballet's libretto has "a romantic theme rather than a specific plot; the characters are dancers." The hostess is "a lady no longer young, but very wealthy and elegant." Her guests are younger: twelve girls and three boys. The ballet has eight parts, each with a different dance music. The young guests flirt, appear to take no notice, or play dance games in a setting filled with social satire and ambiguous sexuality. The hostess, dressed in yellow, brandishes a cigarette holder as if posing for an advertisement. Balanchine comments that she seems driven to remain in motion, her hands, her desperate dance: she is unable to image herself alone and still. Nijinska "was 'powerful' and 'strange,' a dancer 'intoxicated with rhythm, ...racing against the most breathless 'prestos' of the orchestra." In this role of the yellow-clad hostess, Nijinska
"flew round the stage, performing amazing contortions of her body, beating her feet, sliding backwards and forwards, screwing her face into an abandoned attitude on the sofa. She danced as the mood took her and was brilliant."
Dance writer Richard Shead appraised Les Biches as "a perfect synthesis of music, dance, and design... ." He situated it in the aftermath of the radical experimentalism of her brother Vaslav Nijinsky, whose innovations had challenged the classical ballet canons:
"The great strength of Nijinska's choreography was its inventiveness, together with the fact that it remained essentially classical. It is easier to see now than it can have been in the 1920s that the future of choreography lay in classicism but in a classicism which was capable of being extended, varied, distorted even, without departing in any fundamental sense from the mainstream vocabulary of classical dance. Nijinska achieved this in Les Biches; Balanchine was to do so latter... ."
In Les Biches, writes Lynn Garafola, Nijinska's choreography "cracked open the gender codes of classical style, transforming a piece of twenties chic into a critique of sexual mores." Marie Laurencin's decor had "the same ambiguous blend of innocence and corruption" as the ballet. It opens in a flood of pink light that is "voluptuously feminine". A host of taboos are explored: "narcissism, voyeurism, female sexual power, castration, sapphism". Garafola comments that Diaghilev disapproved of the ballet's pessimism, its sour look at gender relations. Portrayed was a femininity "only skin-deep, a subterfuge applied like make-up, a construction elaborated over time by men, not an innate female property." The customary "male bravura dance" is here exposed as pretentious. The ballet "divorces the appearance of love from its reality." Les Biches, surmises Garafola, may be interpreted as disclosing Nijinska's "unease with traditional representations of femininity."
Balanchine, Nijinska's successor as choreographer at Ballets Russes, states that her Les Biches was a "popular ballet of the Diaghilev era". It was revived several times, meeting with "critical and popular approval". "Monte Carlo and Paris audiences... loved it." "Les Biches was very much liked." "Strangely perhaps, Nijinska never approached such heights again."
Les Fâcheux [The Mad, or The Bores] (1924)
fr:Les Fâcheux was originally a three-act ballet comedy, written by the French playwright, librettist, and actor, known by his stage name Molière (1622-1673). It opened in 1661, with baroque music by Pierre Beauchamp and Jean-Baptiste Lully. Without a plot, characters appear, do a monologue, then exit never to return. "Molière's hero Éraste [is] continually hindered by well-meaning bores while on his way to visit his lady love." Adopted for Ballets Russes, the music was by Georges Auric, with scenery designed by Georges Braque, libretto by Jean Cocteau after Molière, choreography by Nijinska.
Nijinska danced the male role of Lysandre, wearing a wig and clothes of the seventeenth-century. Anton Dolin as L'Elégant danced on point to approximate the baroque era and his performance created a sensation. "Her choreography incorporates mannerisms and poses from the period that she modernized by stylization." Braque's costumes were 'Louis XIV'. The original music, however, had been lost, so that Auric was free to evoke the past with a modern composition.
Georges Auric was associated with fellow French composers Francis Poulenc, Darius Milhaud, and Arthur Honegger, part of a group called Les Six. French writer Jean Cocteau courted the group as representing a new approach to the arts, including poetry and painting. Ballets suédois in the early 1920s commissioned members of Les Six to compose music for its dance productions. Ballets Russes followed suit. Some 1920s music critics dismissed Les Six compositions as musiquette. But current critic Lynn Garafola sees in ballet revivals like Les Fâcheux that employ their music a "gaiety and freshness" in their "unpretentious tunes and depiction of everyday life". Garafola appreciates "the independence of the music in relation to the choreography."
Ballets Russes dancer Lydia Lopokova, however, about Nijinska's ballet Les Fâcheux and similar works, commented that it was smooth and professional, but nothing or no one moved her. She longed for very old-fashioned ballets without abstract ideas, with simplicity and poetry. "Massine and Nijinska choreography clever as it is have too much intellect," she felt.
La Nuit sur le Mont chauve [Night on Bald Mountain] (1924)
The ballet premiered in April, 1924, in Monte Carlo, with principal dancers Lydia Sokolova and Michel Fedorov. Nijinska's choreography was set to the music of Modest Mussorgsky. Some designs for ballet then experimented "with costumes that 'reconstructed' the body, transforming its natural shape." For Night on Bald Mountain, Nijinska's sketches "show elongated, arc-like forms." The costumes designed Alexandra Exter "played with shape" and "played with gender".
Exter also "depersonalized the dancers, clothing them in identical gray costumes." Yet it was "the architectural poses of Nijinska's choreography that gave the costumes their distinctive shape". Nijinska emphasized the ensemble rather than the individual dancer, i.e., "her inventive use of the corps de ballet as the central figure" rather than a soloist as was the norm. The total effect allowed the "movement of the dancers to blend... they became a sculpted entity capable of expressing the whole ballet action."
For his 1867 'symphonic poem' La Nuit sur le Mont chauve Mussorgsky was inspired by the witches sabbath as told by Nikolai Gogol in his St. John's Eve story. The composer, however, repeatedly revised and eventually incorporated the music of this 'symphonic poem' into Act III of his unfinished opera, Sorochintsy yarmarka [The Fair at Sorochintsy]. He labored on it for years prior to his death in 1881. Mussorgsky himself wrote the opera's libretto, based on a Gogol story of the same name. Its ballet scenes thus contained the 'night on bald mountain'. The music was later orchestrated by Rimsky-Korsakov.
Le Train Bleu [The Blue Train] (1924)
The ballet Le train blue has been called a 'danced operetta'. Darius Milhaud composed the music, with the ballet libretto by poet and filmmaker Jean Cocteau. Costumes, including "bathing costumes of the period", were by 'Coco' Chanel, with scenery by Henri Laurens. The cast: a handsome kid (Anton Dolin), a bathing belle (Lydia Sokolova), a golfer (Leon Woizikowski), and a tennis player (Nijinska).
The Cocteau libretto has a thin plot. Its title refers to the actual Train Bleu, whose destination was Côte d'Azur, a fashionable resort area, specifically Monte Carlo. "The Blue Train used to bring the beau monde down to the south from Paris... ." Diaghilev remarked, "The first point about Le train bleu is that there is no Blue Train in it." The scenario "took place on a beach, where pleasure-seekers disported themselves." Inspired in part by youth "showing off" with "acrobatic stunts", the ballet "was a smart piece about a fashionable plage" [beach].
"Nijinska created a special ambiance through the language of dance, she introduced angular and geometrical movements and organized dancers on stage as interactive groups, that alluded to images of sports activities, such as golf, tennis and recreational games on a beach."
Popular passion for sport caused Cocteau to first conceive of a 'beach ballet'. The work also provided a prize role for the athletic Anton Dolin, whose "acrobatics astonished and delighted the audience." When he left the company, however, no one as capable could be found for the role, causing the ballet to be dropped.
Probably the ballet suffered when collaboration between Nijinska and librettist Cocteau collapsed. Garafola writes that contested issues included gender (Cocteau said to entertain a "dim view of women" versus Nijinska's unease with traditional femininity), a story and gesture approach verses 'abstract ballet' (Cocteau favored substituting out dance for pantomime, Nijinska satisfied with a plotless ballet), and the changing aesthetics of dance (Cocteau favoring acrobatics over dance, but which for Nijinska constituted a delicate series of judgments). Last minute changes were made. Nijinska's choreography managed to impart a sophistication of view to the beach ballet. Garafola further opines that "Only Nijinska had the technical wherewithal... to wrest irony from the language and traditions of [classical dance]."
Le train bleu anticipated the 1933 ballet Beach. "Massine's choreography, like Nijinska's, was a stylization of sport motifs and different dance idioms within a structured balletic framework." The athletic dance scenes incorporated jazz movements. More recently Nijinska's 1924 choreography was revived.
'Théâtre Chorégraphiques Nijinska', England & Paris 1925
Leaving Diaghilev, start of her dance company
January 1925 marked Nijinska's departure from Ballet Russes. In part she left because of the grief she experienced when in the end Diaghilev had sided with Cocteau over Le Train Bleu. She wanted to lead her own company. Another reason was the 1924 arrival of the dynamic George Balanchine (1904-1983), with an experimental dance troupe from the Soviet Union. Diaghilev recognized his demonstrated talent and recruited him for Ballets Russes. Balanchine filled the choreographer position vacated by Nijinska.
In 1925 Nijinska formed her ballet company: Théâtre Chorégraphiques Nijinska. It was a chamber ensemble that employed eleven dancers. The Russian avant-garde visual artist Alexandra Exter designed the costumes and sets. Nijinska had first met Exter in Kiev during war and revolution. It was a professional relationship that had continued as Nijinska choreographed for Ballets Russes. Nancy Van Doren Baer highly praised their collaboration, "a most dramatic synthesis of the visual and the kinetic".
For her company, Nijinska choreographed six short ballets, and danced in five. She also staged four divertissements, dancing one solo. For the 1925 summer season (August-October), her ballet company toured fifteen English resort towns and provincial cities. It then performed selections in Paris, at an international exhibition and for a gala program. "Judged by any standard, the Théâtre Chorégraphiques offered dancing, choreography, music, and costume design of the highest order."
Holy Etudes, an abstract ballet [Bach]
Her first abstract ballet seen outside Russia, to J. S. Bach's First and Fifth Brandenberg Concertos, was also the first ballet mounted to his music. The dancers wore identical silk tunics and capes, with halo-like headgear. "Exter's 'uni-sex' costumes were revolutionary in their day." Yet, according to accounts, their simple and severe design "added immeasurably to the broad flowing movement and stately rhythms of the choreography, suggesting androgynous beings moving in heavenly harmony."
Silk "enhanced the ethereal quality of the ballet. The brilliant pink and bright orange capes hung straight from bamboo rods placed across the dancers' shoulders... ." Baer further observes, "By varying the levels, groupings, and facings of the dancers, Nijinska created a pictorial composition made up of moving and intersecting planes of color." As in Les Noces, Nijinska called for dancing en pointe "to elongate and stylize the line of the body".
Her short, abstract Bach ballet was one of those creations "she cared most about." She continued to rework the choreography, and presented it in different versions: for Teatro Colón in 1926; for Ballets Nijinska in 1931, which was staged throughout the 1930s; and in 1940 at the Hollywood Bowl.
Five short modern pieces, four divertissements
Nijinska "took contemporary forms of locomotion as her theme", with music by Francis Poulenc, costumes and set by Exter. "Cycling, flying, horse-riding, carriage driving... were all reduced to dancing." It further illustrated ballet's reach to modern life, following her brother Vaslav Nijinsky's Jeux of 1913, and her Les Biches and Le Train Bleu of 1924.
The music was Igor Stravinsky's 1918 composition Ragtime. The composer writes it "was indicative of the passion I felt at that time for jazz... enchanting me by its truly popular appeal, its freshness, and the novel rhythm... ." Exter's costumes followed an 1897 Russian performance of L'Africaine. In 1921 Exter had written about her fascination with the "interrelationship, co-intensity, rhythmization, and the transition to color construction... ." Nininska's choreography is lost. When children, she and her brother Vaslav had developed a friendship with two African-American dance performers, house guests of their parents.
Based on a Kabuki story, with music by Leighton Lucas, and costumes by Exter. Nancy Van Norman Baer conjectures that it developed from a solo designed and danced by Nijinsky in Kiev in 1919. Called Fear, it was inspired by the dynamic movements of a Samurai warrior. In discussions, Nijinska had mentioned Japanese influence on her earlier choreographic works, her source being a collection of Japanese prints purchased in 1911.
The title role is a character in a French puppet show, which became also a name for puppet shows. Music by Joseph Lanner. It was latter performed in 1926 at the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires.
An abbreviated version of her 1924 work for Ballets Russes. "An in Holy Etudes and Les Noces, Nijinska relied on the ensemble instead of using individual dancers to express the ballet-action."
The Musical Snuff Box was a restating of the solo La Poupée first danced by Nijinska in Kiev. Trepak was her The Three Ivans that she had choreographed for Diaghilev's The Sleeping Princess in London. The Mazurka to Chopin was from Les Sylphides. Polovetsian Dances was an ensemble for the entire company.
Ballet companies and exemplary ballets 1926-1930
Nijinska continued to choreograph, dance, and direct, working for ballet companies and institutions in Europe, South America, and the United States.
'Théâtre de l'Opéra' in Paris: Bien Aimée [Beloved]
A one-act ballet, music by Schubert and Liszt, libretto and decor by Benois, with Rubinstein and Vilzak dancing the Nijinska choreography, staged in 1928. The thin plot has a poet reminiscing at the piano about his departed Muse, and his youth. The ballet was revived by the Markova-Dolan company in 1937. The Ballet Theatre in New York City had Nijinska stage its American premier in 1941/1942.
Also at the Paris Opera, in 1924 Nijinska choreographed the ballet La Rencontres [The Encounters], libretto by Kochno, music by Sauguet. Oedipus meets the Sphinx in a circus.
Diaghilev's 'Ballets Russes' in Monte Carlo: Romeo and Juliet
A new version of Romeo and Juliet with music by Constant Lambert premiered in 1926. The ballet impressed Massine, who saw it later in London. "Nijinska's choreography was an admirable attempt to express the poignancy of Shakespeare's play in the most modern terms." At the end, the leading dancers Karsavina and Lifar, lovers in real life, "eloped in an aeroplane". Max Ernst did design work, Balanchine an entr'acte. "It seemed to me that this ballet was far in advance of its time," Massine later wrote.
'Teatro Colón' in Buenos Aires: Estudio Religioso, choreographies for opera
In 1926 Nijinska became choreographic director and principal dancer with Teatro Colón (Columbus Theater). Her active association with the Buenos Aires company would endure until 1946. Over a decade before, in 1913 the Ballets Russes had toured Buenos Aires, Montevideo, and Rio de Janeiro, but Nijinska then with child did not go. Nijinsky her brother did. In 1926 she found in Argentina "an inexperienced but enthusiastic group of dancers," thirty in number, in a ballet organization newly founded by Adolph Bolm.
Nijinska staged Un Estudio Religioso to music by Bach in 1926, which she developed from her choreography Holy Etudes of 1925. At Teatro Colón she was able to expand the work into a presentation by a full company. She drew on innovative ideas she'd first developed in Kiev during the war and the revolution. In both these Bach ballets, there was no libretto, no plot.
"This abstract ballet, inspired by the spirituality of the music, was choreographed to an arrangement of the six Brandenburg Concertos and was the first ballet to be mounted to the music of J. S. Bach."
In 1926 and 1927 for the Buenos Aires theater, Nijinska created dance scenes for fifteen operas, including Bizet's Carmen, Wagner's Tannhäuser, Verdi's Aïda and La Traviata, Stravinsky's Le Rossignol, Rimsky-Korsakov's Tsar Saltan, Massenet's Thaïs, and Gounod's Faust. In 1927 for Teatro Colón, Nijinska directed ballet choreography created by Fokine for Ballets Russes: Ravel's Daphnis et Chloë, and Stravinsky's Petrouchka.
'Ida Rubinstein Ballet' in Paris: Boléro, La Valse, Le Baiser de la Fée
The dancer Ida Rubinstein formed a ballet company in 1928, with Bronislava Nijinska named as its choreographer. Rubinstein quickly arranged for Maurice Ravel to compose music for her new dance enterprise. By luck or genius, one of Ravel's pieces became popular immediately and famous. It has remained so to this day: his Boléro.
For Rubinstein, Nijinska choreographed the original Boléro ballet. In it she created an ambient scene around a large circular platform, surrounded by various individual dancers, who by turns hold the gaze. At times to the side several begin to dance and draw notice. Yet the ballet-action always returns to the center. Dramatic movements inspired by Spanish dance are yet abbreviated, understated, stylized.
Rubinstein herself had danced for Diaghilev in the early years of his company Ballets Russes. In the 1910 ballet Shéhérazade (music also by Ravel) she and Vaslav Nijinsky (Nijinska's brother) both had leading roles. They danced together in a scene Nijinska called "breathtaking". Rubinstein and Nijinsky also had partnered in the ballet Cléopâtre a year before in Paris for Ballets Russes. Rubinstein played the title role. The ballet was "the runaway success of the 1909 season that made her an overnight star".
Rubinstein, now resident in Paris, directed her company to perform another ballet choreographed by Nijinska, the music being Maurice Ravel's La valse. It opened in Monte Carlo in 1929.
A version of the ballet Le Baiser de la Fée [Kiss of the Fairy] originated when Ida Rubinstein asked Igor Stravinsky to compose music to be choreographed by Bronislava Nijinska. It would be staged in 1928. "The idea was that I should compose something inspired by the music of Tchaikovsky," wrote Stravinsky. For a theme he chose Hans Christian Andersen's 'eerie' tale of The Ice-Maiden, to which he put a positive spin: "A fairy imprints her magic kiss on a child at birth... . Twenty years later... she repeats the fatal kiss and carries him off to live in supreme happiness with her... ." Stravinsky understood the story's fairy to be the Muse whose kiss branded Tchaikovsky with a 'magic imprint' inspiring his music. Nijinska created the choreography.
The composer Stravinsky conducted the orchestra for the ballet's first performance at the Opéra in Paris in 1928. Le Baiser de la Fée played at other European capitals, and in 1933 at the Colon Theatre in Buenos Aires. In 1935 Ashton choreographed a new version that played in London, and in 1937 Balanchine did so for a version that played in New York.
'Opéra Russe à Paris': Capriccio Espagnol [Rimsky-Korsakov]
This ballet company 'Opéra Russe à Paris' was founded in 1925 by a Russian singer and her husband, a nephew of French composer Massenet. A company director and major figure was Wassily de Basil (the former Vassily Voskresensky, a Russian entrepreneur, and perhaps once a Cossack officer). Since Sergei Diaghilev's death in 1929, followed by the collapse of his 'Ballets Russes', an discomforting void inhabited the world of European ballet.
Nijinska in 1930 joined 'Opèra Russe à Paris' run by de Basil. She was "to choreograph the ballet sequences" in several well-known operas. She was also "to create works for the all-ballet evenings that alternated with evenings of opera." Consequently, she created the ballet for Capriccio Espagnol by Russian composer Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. She also staged several of her previous ballet creations (Les Noces and Les Biches) and other Ballets Russes fare of the Diaghilev era.
In 1931 she turned down an "unusually generous" offer from de Basil in order to start the company, 'Ballets Nijinska'. She wanted to pursue projects independently, although she maintained her former working situation for a time longer. Latter in 1934 and 1935 she would again work with de Basil's company.
René Blum (brother of the French politician Léon Blum) was then "organizing the ballet seasons at the Casino de Monte Carlo." In 1931 he began talks with de Basil about combining ballet operations, hence the naissant company 'Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo'. From de Basil would come "dancers, repertory, scenery, and costumes" and from Blum "the theater and its facilities and financial support". A contract was signed in January 1932. "From the beginning de Basil acted as impresario." Soon, however, Blum and de Basil fell out and in 1936 split, each forming his own company. Later in the 1940s Nijinska staged works for a successor to Blum's half, then run by Sergei Denham.
Her dance companies 1931-1932, 1932-1934
During the early thirties, Nijinska formed and directed several ballet companies of her own. In 1934, however, misfortune involving her innocent entanglement in another's civil law dispute caused the loss of essential trade property. This setback led her to accept offers from other dance companies. Her work in choreography continued, but with a variety of other companies and theaters, sometimes in a 'freelance' capacity.
'Ballets Nijinska' in Paris: Etude-Bach, choreographies for Opéra-Comique
In 1931 while also staging dance productions for 'Opera Russe à Paris' (see above), Nijinska operated independently under her own name: 'Ballets Nijinska'. Here she choreographed ballet pieces for operas performed at the Opéra-Comique of Paris, or at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, where she operated under the auspices of the 'Opera Russe' yet autonomously as 'Ballets Nijinska'.
In 1931 her company staged Etude-Bach with Boris Belinsky's decor and costumes, after Alexandra Exter. This was a new version of her 1925 Holy Etudes and her 1926 Un Estudio Religioso.
'Théâtre de la Danse Nijinska' in Paris: Variations [Beethoven], Hamlet [Liszt]
From 1932 to 1934 Nijinska directed her own Paris-based company, Théâtre de la Danse. A new ballet Variations was staged in 1932, inspired by the music by Ludwig van Beethoven (a selection of his compositions). The dancers followed a difficult theme: the flux in the fate of nations (classical Greece, Russia under Alexander I, France during the early Second Empire). The choreography was primarily ensemble dances and pantomime, with costume and decor by Georges Annenkov.
In 1934 she choreographed Hamlet, based on Shakespeare's play, performed to music by Hungarian composer Franz Liszt. Nijinska played the title role. "Her choreography, however, instead of retelling Shakespeare's plot, emphasized the feelings of the tragedy's tormented characters." Nijinska conceived "three aspects for each of the protagonists". In addition to "the real character" there were "characters representing his soul and his fate" played "by separate groups of dancers" like "a Greek chorus". Eight years later another Hamlet ballet, created by Robert Helpmann to music by Tchaikovsky, was staged in London, also not following the original plot.
There were also performances of two of her remarkable ballets from the mid-1920s, Les Biches (a.k.a. The House Party) in 1932 and in 1933 Les Noces [The Wedding]. Nijinska's Théâtre de la Danse spent ballet seasons in Paris and Barcelona, and toured France and Italy.
In 1934 Nijinska joined her dance company to Wassily de Basil's company Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo. For the 1934 Opera and Ballet seasons, she directed the Monte Carlo productions of the combined companies in performances of her repertoire. Later in 1934 her 'Théâtre de la Danse' company lost its costumes and sets when, for the benefit of unpaid artists of the 'Opera Russe à Paris', they were mistakenly seized in this legal dispute. Not until 1937 was Nijinska able to recover them.
Ballet companies and exemplary ballets 1935-1938
de Basil's 'Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo': Les Cent Baisers
Nijinska choreographed Les Cent Baisers [The hundred kisses] in 1935 for de Basil's company. This one-act ballet was set to music by Anglo-French composer Frédéric Alfred d'Erlanger. It opened in London at Covent Garden.
The libretto by Boris Kochno followed the literary fairy tale "The swineherd and the princess" created by Hans Christian Andersen. Here a disguised prince woos an arrogant princess. Nijinska's choreography is considered one of her more classical. Yet she incorporated subtle variations from the usual academic steps, according to Irina Baronova who danced the role of the princess. It gave the piece a special feeling of the East. The prince was played by David Lichine.
Nijinska in 1934-1935 had worked with the de Basil company in Monte Carlo.
Max Reinhardt's Hollywood film: A Midsummer Night's Dream
In 1934 Max Reinhardt requested Nijinska to travel to Los Angeles and choreograph the dance scenes for his 1935 film A Midsummer Night's Dream. It was a Hollywood recreation of the William Shakespeare comedy, with music by Felix Mendelssohn. Much of the music was taken from his two compositions about this Shakespeare play. The first was Mendelssohn's 1826 concert overture, the second his 1842 incidental music, which incorporated the overture. Apparently Los Angeles agreed with Nijinska, for she would make it her permanent residence a few years later. In 1934 she designed the dances.
"Nijinska's incidental choreography for A Midsummer Night's Dream (1935) was as imaginative and magical as everything else in that sumptuously produced film."
As a one-act ballet in Sankt Peterburg A Midsummer Night's Dream had been "first choreographed by Marius Petipa in 1876" and in 1902 by Mikhail Fokine, to Mendelssohn's 1842 music. Other versions were later staged by Terpis (Berlin 1927), Balanchine (New York 1962), Ashton (London 1964), and Spoerli (Basle 1975). A staging of Fokine's choreography, however, at the Imperial Theatrical School on March 26, 1906, was especially memorable for Nijinska. Not only did she dance in it, but the date marked a visit by her father after a long absence.
The 1935 film was not Nijinska's first time in the employ of Max Reinhardt. The well-known impresario's practice was to stage a variety of performance arts in theaters across Europe. In 1931, for a Reinhardt production in Berlin, Nijinska had created the ballet scenes for Offenbach's opera The Tales of Hoffmann.
Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires: Le Baiser de la Fée, Opera choreographies
Nijinska had presented at Teatro Colón in 1933 her ballet Le Baiser de la Fée [Kiss of the fairy], which she had first staged for Ida Rubinstein's Company in 1928. It was based on Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale The Ice-Maiden. Yet, in recreating the tale, music composer Igor Stravinsky had changed the eerie maiden into a fruitful Muse, inverting Andersen's original story in which the ice-maiden, disguised as a beautiful woman, attracts young men who are led to their death. In 1937 Nijinska returned to Buenos Aires for a reprise performance of Le Baiser de la Fée at the Stravinsky Festival.
Ballet choreography she created for dance scenes in operatic works that played at Teatro Colón. Accordingly, Nijinska worked with the music of various composers, e.g., Mussorgsky, Verdi, de Falla, and Wagner.
'Markova-Dolin Ballet' in London, & Jamaica; (Markova later: Autumn Song)
Nijinska staged her Les Biches in a reprise performance by the Markova-Dolin Ballet in 1937. "For six months during 1937 the troupe was creatively bolstered by the presence of Nijinska, who took charge of rehearsals and classes in addition to staging Les Biches and La Bien-Aimée."
In 1935 Alicia Markova had left the Vic-Wells ballet company of Ninette de Valois, where she had excelled in leading classical roles, in order to "help form the Markova-Dolin Company (1935-1938), with Bronislava Nijinsky as chief choreographer." Irish dancer Anton Dolin was in 1921 with Ballets Russes, latter the handsome swimmer of Nijinska's 1924 Le Train Bleu, and in the 1930s a dance partner with Markova; in 1940 he joined American Ballet Theatre.
After the war for the Markova-Dolin company Nijinska choreographed Fantasia. It was a one-act ballet with music by Franz Schubert and Franz Liszt, which opened 14 April 1947 at the Ward Theatre, Kingston, Jamaica. Costumes and decor were by Rose Schogel, with principal dancers Bettina Rosay and Anton Dolin.
In the 1930s Nijinska gave Alicia Markova 'creative sessions' in ballet, including instructions in her choreographed dances. In particular she taught Markova an early work of hers from Kiev: Autumn Song to music by Tchaikovsky. Nijinska had originally danced it barefoot wearing a tunic of her own design. In 1953 Markova performed this solo ballet for a variety show on NBC television.
'Ballet Polonais' in Warsaw: Concerto de Chopin, La Légende de Cracovie
In 1937 Nijinska was asked to become the artistic director and the choreographer for the newly recreated Ballet Polonais (Polish Ballet). In the revival of this national ballet, among its chief aims: to advance the Polish dance heritage, to train new ballet professionals, and to perform internationally. She signed a 3-year contract. For the company's 1937-1938 debut season, she created five new ballets, including Concerto de Chopin and La Légend de Cracovie.
The five opened in November 1937, at the Théâtre de Mogador in Paris, as part of the Exposition Internationale. Well received, the Exposition awarded Ballet Polonais the Grand Prix for performance and Nijinska the Grand Prix for choreography. The company then performed their ballet program in London, Berlin, and Warsaw, and also toured many cities in Germany and in Poland.
The Concerto de Chopin "follows no plot but tries to reflect the shifting moods of the music." Baer comments that the ballet shows Nijinska's "feeling of longing, farewell, and sorrow that she had experienced on leaving Russia." About her Chopin Concerto (as later performed in 1944), dance critic Edward Denby wrote:
The structure of the piece--like that of much of Mme Nijinska's work--is based on a formal contrast: in the background, rigid impersonal groups or clusters of dancers, which seem to have the weight of statues; in the foreground, rapid arrowy flights performed by individual soloists. One appreciates their flashes of lightness and freedom because of the weight they seem to rise over, as if the constraints of the group were the springboard for the soloist's release." Later Denby added that the Concerto is "oddly beautiful... because it is clear and classic to the eye but tense and romantic in its emotion."
Nijinska also staged La Légend de Cracovie, "a new ballet of high merit" to music by Michal Kondracki. In plot it's "a medieval Polish variation of the Faust story". In choreography she employed her "celebrated group architecture" but also fashioned roles open to character dance development.
After the Grand Prix-winning tour, Nijinska was "abruptly released". Most likely the cause of her dismissal was "her insistence upon a full disclosure of the troupe's financial records." Due to the increasingly grave military threats from neighboring countries, the Polish government apparently was seeking to covertly route some of its funds to America. "Characteristically, Nijinska would have refused to become involved with politics or intrigue." She was replaced by Léon Wójcikowski. He then led the Ballet Polonais to the 1939 World's Fair in New York. "The company returned to Warsaw one day before the German invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, and was never heard from again."
With Ballets Russes since 1916 Leon Woizikovsky (1899-1975) had enjoyed prominent roles in Nijinska's Les Noces, Les Biches, and Le Train Bleu (as the Golfer). Much later he helped in reconstructing her choreography. Even so, the "shock of her dismissal" and "the impending war caused a profound depression in Nijinska."
Ballet companies and exemplary ballets 1939-1950s
Nijinska and her family were in London when World War II started with the combined Nazi and Soviet invasion of Poland (September 1939). She had a contract to "co-direct the dance sequences on a new film, Bullet in the Ballet," but it was cancelled due to war. Fortunately, an offer from promoter de Basil allowed them to make their way back to the United States. She eventually established a new residence in Los Angeles.
'Ballet Theatre' in New York: La Fille Mal Gardée of Dauberval
Nijinska in 1939 began to choreograph a "rustic and comic" two-act ballet of the 18th century, Jean Dauberval's La fille mal gardée ['The ill-watched Daughter' or 'Useless Precautions']. For the inaugural season of Ballet Theatre (now ABT), it opened in January 1940 in New York City at the old Center Theatre in Rockefeller Plaza.
La Fille Mal Gardée is perhaps "the oldest ballet in the contemporary repertory" whose "comic situations are no doubt responsible for its survival." Jean Dauberval wrote the libretto and first choreography, the original music being a mix of popular French songs. Premiering at Grand Théâtre de Bordeaux in 1789, the comedy "quickly made the circuit of European stages." Later in 1864 Taglioni's production in Berlin first adopted composite music scored by Hertel, which in 1885 was adopted by Petipa and Ivanov for the Maryinski Theater in Sankt-Peterburg.
The Dauberval's plot follows a lively rural romance, the lovers being "the mind-of-her-own Lise and the hard-to-resist Colas". They are challenged by Lise's mother the widow Simone, who prefers Allain, a wealthy but dull suitor.
"In America the most important production was Nijinska's for Ballet Theatre in 1940." Lucia Chase had invited her to mount her own version, which incorporated decor from Mordkin (his company had merged with Ballet Theatre). Nijinska took to revising Petipa's Russian version of La Fille Mal Gardée and staged the ballet with Irina Baronova and Dimitri Romanoff. This 1940 staging was soon revived, once as The Wayward Daughter, with later versions by Romanoff, and in 1946 by Alexandra Balashova. Eventually it entered the repertory of the Grand Ballet du Marquis de Cuevas.
Twenty years later in London, Nijinska's former student Frederick Ashton of The Royal Ballet staged it. He refashioned the Dauberval libretto, wrote his choreography to Hertel's music (modified by Lanchbery), and provided a revised decor. The result was a popular and "substantial work".
Also for Ballet Theatre, in 1951 Nijinska choreographed and staged the Schumann Concerto, music by Robert Schumann, with Alicia Alonso and Igor Youskevitch as principal dancers. The music's romantic mood frames the abstract ballet in three movements. The couple is joined by a corps de ballet of boys and girls. In 1945 Nijinska had choreographed Rendezvous with music by Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943), with principal dancers Lucia Chase and Dimitri Romanoff. Both were staged for Ballet Theatre at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City.
'The Hollywood Bowl' in Los Angeles: Boléro, Chopin Concerto, Etude-Bach
Later in 1940 she staged three short ballets for a performance at the Hollywood Bowl. For the program with the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra she selected favorites from among her prior choreographies: Ravel's Boléro (premiered with Rubinstein in 1932, revised), the Chopin Concerto (from 1937 with the Polish Ballet), and Etude-Bach (originally 'Holy Etudes' done for her own company in 1925, revisions). The event drew an audience of 22,000.
'Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo' under Denham in New York: Snow Maiden.
Nijinska choreographed Snow Maiden in 1942 with music by Glazunov, for 'Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo' under Serge Denham as Artistic Director. Snow Maiden drew on Russian folklore. The maiden, the Frost King's daughter, would melt in the sun's heat if she fell in love with a mortal man. The choreography "did not open any new avenues of artistic exploration." Yet critic Edwin Denby notes that "by preserving just enough independence of rhythm in relation to the sugary Glazounoff score [her groupings and dance phrases] keep a certain acid edge."
A revision of the Chopin Concerto was staged by Nijinska also in 1942. Originally written in 1937 for the award-winning Polish Ballet, the influential New York Times dance critic John Martin ranked it highly. Yet he considered Chopin (and Tchaikovsky) as no longer current. In 1943 Nijinska choreographed the Ancient Russia ballet, music by Tchaikovsky, with memorable visual designs by her theater colleague Nathalie Gontcharova.
For Denham's company Nijinska and Balanchine "were well-known choreographers on whom he could call." It was, however, "not Nijinska but another woman-an American-who revitalized the Ballets Russes in 1942. Agnes de Mille [did it with her] Rodeo... ."
'Ballet International' in New York: Pictures at an Exhibition
During the 1940s and into the 1950s, Nijinska served as the ballet mistress for the International Ballet, later known variously, e.g., the Grand Ballet du Marquis de Cuevas. The company played chiefly in Europe and the Mediterranean until 1961.
In 1944 for an opening at the International Theater in New York she choreographed Pictures at an Exhibition, an 1874 suite of piano pieces by Modest Mussorgsky, later orchestrated by Maurice Ravel, and by Ivan Boutnikov. Mussorgsky wrote no ballet music, but two of his compositions inspired Nijinska: Night on Bald Mountain (Ballets Russes 1924), and here Pictures.
Costumes and decor were by Boris Aronson. Aronson was an apprentice of Aleksandra Ekster, Nijinska's designer in Kiev and Paris. Evidently Nijinska was the first to choreograph Pictures. The next ballet to this music was staged by Erika Hanka at the Vienna State Opera (1947), and then by Lopokov at the Bolshoi in Moscow (1963).
In 1952 also for Marquis de Cuevas' Grand Ballet de Monte Carlo, Nijinska choreographed Rondo Capriccioso. Composed in 1863 by Saint-Saëns, it was originally crafted for the virtuoso violinist Pablo de Sarasate. The 1952 ballet by Nijinska opened in Paris at the Théâtre de l'Empire, with principal dancers Rosella Hightower and George Skibine.
Ballet companies: revivals of her early choreographies 1960-1971
'Grand Ballet du Marquis de Cuevas' in New York: The Sleeping Beauty
In 1960 the Cuevas Ballet produced a revision of The Sleeping Beauty, to be staged by Nijinska. She was familiar with the ballet. In 1921 when she rejoined Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, she worked in its grand production of Petipa's classic 1890 three-act ballet The Sleeping Princess. She reviewed its choreography and added several new dances. With Stravinsky she later abbreviated it into a successful one-act 1922 ballet, Aurora's Wedding.
Long associated as ballet mistress with the Cuevas company, she began to craft her choreographic revision to Tchaikovsky's familiar music. A conflict, however, developed over its staging which involved artistic issues. In discussions Nijinska declined compromise. She withdrew from the company. Robert Helpmann then came into the process. He'd danced with Fonteyn in The Royal Ballet's famous 1949 Sleeping Beauty; he also staged. In the end the Cuevas company gave choreographic credit to both, as Nijinska-Helpmann.
'The Royal Ballet' of London: Les Biches and Les Noces
In 1964 Nijinska was asked by choreographer Frederick Ashton to stage a revival of her ballet Les Biches (1924) at Covent Gardens for The Royal Ballet. Ashton had become resident choreographer there in 1935. An associate director of the London company since 1952, he was appointed director in 1963.
As a young ballet student, Nijinska had mentored his career. In 1928 when she was the choreographer for Ida Rubenstein, he'd been a dancer in the company and performed in several of her choreographed works. Ashton consider her influential in the development of ballet, and specifically that her choreography had informed his own progress in that art. The staging of the revived Les Biches went well. Two years later, Ashton asked her to return to London and stage her Les Noces (1923) on his company.
These London productions, according to dance critic Horst Koegler, "confirmed her reputation as one of the formative choreographers of the 20th century." In 1934 Ashton had written:
"Her achievements have proved to me time and again that through the medium of classical ballet any emotion may be expressed. She might be called the architect of dancing, building her work brick by brick into the amazing structures that result in masterpieces like Les Noces."
Other stagings: Brahms Variations, Le Marriage d'Aurore, Chopin Concerto
Following these London events, Nijinska "was repeatedly invited to revive several of her ballets". She staged Les Biches in Rome in 1969, and in Florence and Washington in 1970. Also Les Noces in 1971 in Venice where, during a rehearsal at the Teatro Fenice, she celebrated her eightieth birthday onstage. "Between 1968 and 1972, Nijinska restaged Les Biches, Les Noces, Brahms Variations, Le Marriage d'Aurore, and Chopin Concerto for ballet companies in the United States and Europe."
Irina Nijinska's further work on the ballet revivals
After her death in 1972, her daughter Irina Nijinsky continued this work. The result was a series of performances of revived early ballets by her mother, several of which entered the repertoire of ballet companies, including ballets first produced by Ballets Russes.
Her daughter Irina Nijinska (1913-1991) was a dancer in her own right. She had helped her with her work for many years, both at her ballet school and as her rehearsal assistant. After Nijinska died, Irina carried forward various projects which advanced her mother's legacy. The first order of business: editing and translating Early Memoirs and seeing it to publication. In the theatrical world Irina Nijinska associated with ballet companies to facilitate revivals of the choreographies. Les Noces and Les Biches increasingly appeared on stage.
Among others, Irina assisted with the production of Les Noces by The Paris Opera Ballet, of "Rondo Capriccioso" by Dance Theater of Harlem and, in collaboration with a dance historian to reconstruct it, with staging the Riviera comedy "Le Train Bleu" by the Oakland Ballet. In 1981 the Dance Theatre of Harlem under Arthur Mitchell "produced an entire Nijinska evening". After Irina's death in 1991, other revivals followed.
Commentary by critics and academics
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Instead, she preferred the pre-war Diaghilev who had been "searching for the creation of a new ballet... ." Hence regarding The Sleeping Princess Nijinska recalled the paradox that "I started my first work full of protest against myself." Over the course of her career Nijinska, in her effort to augment classical ballet with new ideas about the art of movement, neither crossed over to champion a newly fashion modernity, nor did she accept as timelessly classic the inherited ballet tradition. She declined her brother Nijinsky's turn to modern dance. Instead, following the new insights into movement, she initiated "what would be called neoclassical choreography". She eventually came to admire Petipa's work, while pruning its "nondance elements". A "renewable legacy was at the heart of Nijinska's classicism". As "one of the twentieth-century ballet's great innovators... her repertoire introduced a new classicism that made dance a medium of modern art expression."
Ballet based in Los Angeles, from 1940
After the start in 1939 of World War II in Europe, Nijinska and her family moved to New York in that October, then to Los Angeles in 1940. "Bronislava Nijinska did not understand Americans, or they her. She was almost deaf by the time she reached the United States, and life (exile, her brother's madness, her son's death) had let her down badly."
Yet she continued as a ballet mistress and guest choreographer, work that continued into the 1960s (see section above). In Los Angeles she began to teach ballet in a private studio, and she opened her own school in 1941. Her daughter Irina Nijinska would run the school in her absence. Bronislava became a citizen of the United States in 1949.
Teaching dance
Throughout her career, starting earlier than her 1919 'L'Ecolé de Mouvement' in Kiev, Nijinska had taught dance. A ballet role to her colleagues she'd demonstrate, or to the cast her newly created choreographies. Among her earlier students: Serge Lifar in revolutionary Kiev, Frederick Ashton, Alicia Markova, Irina Baronova, and David Lichine in interwar Europe, Lucia Chase in New York. Her auditions in the 1930s were conducted in the form of a short class.
In 1935 rehearsals for Les Cent Baisers, choreographer Nijinska coached the youthful Irina Baronova in her leading role as the Princess. Already relatively widely experienced in ballet performance, she was developing rapidly into a modern classical ballerina. According to author Vicente García-Márquez, however, Nijinska was key.
"Working with Nijinska was a turning point in her artistic growth. Before she had never had the opportunity for careful dissection of her roles. Nijinska's approach... gave the sixteen-year-old Baronova the self-awareness she needed to probe into herself and bring forth her full potential."
In New York Nijinska was invited to come teach in Hollywood. She eventually opened her own ballet studio there in 1941. Required to travel afar to pursue her choreographic work, she frequently left her daughter Irina Nijinska in charge. At her Hollywood studio (soon relocated to Beverly Hills), students included the prima ballerinas Maria Tallchief and Marjorie Tallchief (sisters), as well as Cyd Charisse, and later Allegra Kent.
Maria Tallchief (1925-2013) studied with Nijinska, "all through my high school years". Everyone, recalled Tallchief, was in awe of her. "She jumped and flashed around the studio. I was under her spell." Despite "luminous green eyes" she dressed very plainly. Her husband translated. "Madame say when you sleep, sleep like a ballerina. Even on street waiting for bus, stand like a ballerina." Yet "Madame Nijinska rarely spoke. She didn't have to. She had incredible personal magnetism". From her "I first learned that the dancer's soul is in the middle of the body". When Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo came to perform in Los Angeles, the ballet dancers came to Madame to take lessons. "And the biggest star of all, Alexandra Danilova, gave Nijinska roses when she entered the studio".
Allegra Kent (born 1937) recalls starting ballet lessons in 1949 when she was twelve. Madame Nijinska was a "nice-looking woman in black lounge pajamas with a long cigarette holder". She counted time "ras, va, tri" in Russian. "Her husband was simultaneously translating everything she said into English." Because of her commanding presence in classes, "The world began and ended right there in that moment." After a year with her daughter Irina Nijinska, Kent studied with 'Madame' herself. She learned "not to fear competing with men" and that "the light look of dance was merely the surface of a sculpture-there was a mixture of steel and quicksilver at the heart."
Work on her Memoirs
The last year of her life Nijinska devoted to finishing memoirs about her early life. She had notebooks of her writings and had kept theatrical programs throughout her career. A manuscript of 180,000 words was left completed. Following her death in early 1972, Bronislava Nijinska's daughter Irina Nijinska was named her literary executor. Then she and Jean Rawlingson edited and translated the Russian manuscript into English. They edited the text, and saw it through to publication. The book Early Memoirs appeared in 1981. These writings describe in detail her early years traveling in provincial Russia with her dancer parents, her brother Vaslav's development as a dancer, her schooling and first years as a professional in the Diaghilev era of Russian ballet, and her work assisting her brother in his choreography. During her life, she had published a book and several articles on ballet.
"The full autobiographical story of her own career, however, is contained in another set of her memoirs, continuing from the 1914 close of [her Early Memoirs]." She also left a set of notebooks on ballet and other writings, which remain unpublished. Dance historian and critic Lynn Garafola is said to be currently working on a biography of Bronislava Nijinska.
As described by others
Margaret Severn, a dancer who did both vaudeville and classical, was for a time in 1931 a leading dancer in Nijinska's Paris-based company. Sometimes she'd abreviate Nijinska as "Nij". Later she wrote an article from her notes at the time:
"I was very favorably impressed with [Nijinska] personality. She is somewhat crazy, of course, but really a great artist. I could tell from the little she showed, and she had a marvelous technique herself. So I would simply adore to be in the company... ." "Nij arranged a very short but very snappy little dance for me in the 'Variations'. ... [T]his half minute is quite likely to bring the house down. ... The dance is one of the most brilliant and most difficult concoctions I have ever seen."
Lydia Sokolova, an English ballerina, performed in Ballets Russes from 1913 to 1929. Circa 1920 she married Leon Woizikovsky, also a dancer in the company. Her memoirs were edited by Richard Buckle and published in London in 1960.
"Bronislava Nijinska, known as Bronia, was very like her brother Vaslav Nijinsky. She was blonde and wore her straight hair screwed into a tight little roll. She had pale eyes and pouting lips, wore no makeup at all and had not shaved off her eyebrows as most of us had in those days. ... Bronia was obstinate and once she had made up her mind nothing in the world would move her. She was brilliantly clever and inventive. No music seemed to present any difficulties for her, but her style of movement was even more pronounced and idiosyncratic than that of Massine, and she was not an easy person to work for in class or at rehearsal... . Her system of training seemed to depend more on improvisation than on traditional methods of technique... . [T]o watch her devise a sequence of steps and movements for one of her ballets was most interesting. I liked her, in spite of her moodiness and lack of humor." "There were two of us in the company whom Diaghilev could always make cry whenever he wished, Nijinska and myself."
As one of the three Russian baby ballerinas the teenager Irina Baronova worked with Nijinska the choreographer in the mid-1930s. She later described the experience.
"The ideas were clear from the very beginning; and even though there was obviously a prearranged structure, once she was in the studio she involved the dancers in the creative process. ... Her choreography seemed to flow spontaneously. Even when she was improvising, she always projected the conviction that she knew her ultimate goals, for she was precise and direct in her explanations."
Personal, family life
Mother and father
After her parents separated, Vaslav had turned against his father Tomasz [Foma] Nijinsky, because of his infidelity. Bronislava, however, remained attached to her absent father, who visited from time to time. She followed his career, championing his times of subsequent success in ballet. With Tomasz her mother eventually reached some understanding. In 1912 her father died in Russia. Her oldest brother Stanislav (Stassik), by a doctor's instructions placed in a sanitariums since 1902, died in Russia in 1918.
In 1921 Nijinska with her mother Eleanora Bereda Nijinska and her two children left Russia, a perilous undertaking. They made their way to Austria, to meet her brother, his wife, and children. Nijinska then rejoined Ballets Russes, chiefly in Paris and Monte Carlo, until 1925. Thereafter she worked independently, often on tour. Throughout Bronislava remained close to her mother the retired dancer whom she called "Mamusia". She wrote her when away and shared her thoughts when near. She cared for her when ill, until she died in 1932.
Her brother Vaslav
During her early years and into her mid-twenties, Bronislava Nijinsky was under the strong influence of her older brother Vaslav Nijinsky, whose brilliance became widely celebrated. Both Vatsa and Broni were trained from the start by their dancer parents. She learned from her brother's example, as he preceded her in their childhood adventures, in ballet school, and then on the stage. When Nijinsky came to design his first choreographies, Nijinska as a ballet dancer assisted, following his detailed instructions as he tried out new steps and innovative poses. Her 1912 marriage, however, shook the artistic "bond between the brother and sister". Bronia nonetheless continued her sibling loyalty. She showed her support for Vaslav's career, especially during his 1914 production of Season Nijinsky in London.
In 1913 Vaslav married Romola de Pulszky suddenly while in Argentina. It was a confounding surprise to his mother and sister. In 1917 his ballet career ended in confusion and controversy. Thereafter he lived with Romola and their children for many years in Switzerland. He died in Sussex, UK, in 1950. Vaslav was survived by his wife and by Kyra and Tamara, their two daughters; and by Tamara's daughter, and by Kyra's son Vaslav Markevitch. In 1931 Kyra had danced in her aunt Boronia's company 'Ballets Nijinska'.
Marriages, children
Nijinska married twice. Her first husband, Alexandre Kochetovsky, was a fellow dancer for Ballet Busses. She calls him 'Sasha' in her Early Memoirs. Married in London in 1912, they soon left for Russia. She gave birth to two children: their daughter Irina Nijinska in 1913 in Sankt Peterburg (called 'Irushka'), and Leon Kochetovsky, their son in 1919 in Kiev (called 'Levushka'). Their marriage had entered difficult times, first during war and then in revolution. They continuously had worked together in dance productions. After Leon was born, Bronia and Sasha separated. He moved to Odessa. In 1921 Nijinska left Soviet Russia with her children and her mother. After meeting again briefly in 1921 in London, they were divorced in 1924. Their son Leon was killed in a traffic accident in 1935. Their daughter Irina, who'd become a ballet dancer, was also seriously injured in the same traffic collision. In 1946 Irina married Gibbs S. Raetz, and they had two children, Natalie and George. She died in 1991.
A true love of her life, but whom she did not marry, was also a theatrical personality, the Russian opera singer and renowned basso, Feodor Chaliapin (1873-1938). Their career paths had crossed several times, but for a romance to blossom their circumstances worked against them. Yet their strong artistic link and mutual admiration continued. He remained a treasured source of her theatrical inspiration.
Nijinska's second marriage in 1924 was to Nicholas Singaevsky (called 'Kolya'). A few years her junior, he'd been a former student and dancer at the 'Ecole de Mouvement' she had founded in Kiev following the Russian revolution. He, too, had left Russia. They met again as exiles in Monte Carlo. He became associated with Ballets Russes as a dancer. They were married in 1924. During their four decades together, he often worked in production and management, acting as her business partner in staging her various ballet productions and other projects. In America he also translated for her, especially when she taught at the ballet studio. He died in Los Angeles, California, in 1968, four years before her.
Bronislava Nijinska died on February 21, 1972, in Pacific Palisades, California, after suffering a heart attack. She was 81. She was survived by her daughter, son-in-law, and two grandchildren.
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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