Ondine Posted July 22, 2023 Share Posted July 22, 2023 From today's LINKS (not sure if this is the appropriate forum but here goes) Nijinsky misrepresented - gossip and myth should not be taken as truth: Ariette Taylor & Rebe Taylor, Dance Australia Very interesting discussion about Nijinsky, his sexuality, Faun, art, in case anyone missed it. https://www.danceaustralia.com.au/artists/nijinsky-misrepresented It's good to have the insights and further history this essay brings on the man, the ballet, his life and times. Vaslav Nijinsky is a part of ballet legend, but gossip and myth should not be taken as truth, writes Ariette Taylor. 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ian Macmillan Posted July 22, 2023 Share Posted July 22, 2023 I have to admit that when I posted this for Links today, I was taken back to the first time I saw Faun (with Carlos Acosta, I think) and I was considerably taken aback by its final moments. I thought it highly sexual in nature but, as Ms Taylor says, that connotation may well have been of my own creation. Whatever the case, I much prefer the totally different Robbins version. 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jan McNulty Posted July 22, 2023 Share Posted July 22, 2023 My first Faun was Rudolf Nureyev in (I think) 1982 at one of his London Coliseum seasons - the tickets were included in a Woman’s Own weekend we had booked - it was before I became a confirmed ballet-watcher. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
capybara Posted July 22, 2023 Share Posted July 22, 2023 (edited) I believe that Ann Hutchinson Guest devoted much of her life to staging Nijinsky’s Faun and became the acknowledged expert. When she worked on the ballet with ENB the ending appeared to me at least as @IanMacmillan recalls. What is certain is that Anton Lukovkin delivered a simply astonishing, never to be forgotten performance in the name role. Edited July 22, 2023 by capybara 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ondine Posted July 22, 2023 Author Share Posted July 22, 2023 (edited) Yes. I met her many years ago. I've met so many people who at the time I don't think I fully appreciated who they were (or what they would become!). Some memories are becoming hazy. Pity about the 'mad' in the title but this is interesting. https://deirdrekelly.com/?p=1274 Edited July 22, 2023 by Ondine 1 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ondine Posted July 22, 2023 Author Share Posted July 22, 2023 For a rather longer read on the subject (!) there's this https://getd.libs.uga.edu/pdfs/huddleston_cheryldee_201012_phd.pdf Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mary Posted July 23, 2023 Share Posted July 23, 2023 Very interesting. I am no hand at posting anything, and always look at the Links, but just to note there is an essay by Alice Robb in the current Times Literary Supplement which I read in hard copy, about 'the return of narrative ballet' with a focus on 'Like Water for..' and a discussion of the relationship between dance and story. I don't know if you have already found/can find it, Ian or Jan. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ondine Posted July 23, 2023 Author Share Posted July 23, 2023 (edited) It's here, online, though you have to be a subscriber to read on https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/ballet-narrative-essay-alice-robb/ Edited July 23, 2023 by Ondine 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pas de Quatre Posted July 23, 2023 Share Posted July 23, 2023 Fascinating article Nijinsky Misrepresented. Thanks for posting here Ian as I don't always get time to read the links. Madame Rambert was a good friend of my original ballet teacher, and when the company was appearing at Arts Theatre Cambridge they would use our studios for rehearsals. Arriving after school for our own classes we were allowed to creep in and watch the last bit. I didn't see Faune in rehearsal but did in performance. OK these were the swinging sixties, but I did wonder why the ending of Faune was meant to be so shocking when it wasn't. This explains it. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
li tai po Posted July 23, 2023 Share Posted July 23, 2023 Capybara, you have awoken happy memories for me of Anton Lukovkin's portrayal for ENB of Nijinsky's Faun. The closing moments were intense, oozing sensuality and, as you say, unforgettable. I have seen many interpretations of Nijinsky's Faun, my first was Christopher Bruce with Ballet Rambert, but I will never forget Anton Lukovkin's performance. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Beryl H Posted July 23, 2023 Share Posted July 23, 2023 15 hours ago, Jan McNulty said: My first Faun was Rudolf Nureyev in (I think) 1982 at one of his London Coliseum seasons - the tickets were included in a Woman’s Own weekend we had booked - it was before I became a confirmed ballet-watcher. This was probably where I saw Rudolf Nureyev dance Faun, I knew I had seen him but couldn't think where 🙂 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Emeralds Posted July 23, 2023 Share Posted July 23, 2023 (edited) Ms Taylor’s recollection of Marie Rambert’s instructions fits in better and more logically with what Debussy’s music score is saying. I’ve always been puzzled (when eventually old enough to understand what writers meant by the m and o words! ) by why they felt that that was what was going on in the last scene, and why revivals staged it thus. So the various re-stagings of Nijinsky’s versions have never really clicked with me and actually felt quite.....boring. (I didn’t get to see the ENB performance that members are praising here) On the other hand, the passages at the beginning certainly have sections that sound sensuous (but that’s before the nymphs arrive) so if that was in the choreography then that would make more sense. I would like to have seen Marie Rambert’s staging as well as Nijinsky himself in the role in the original production, if a time machine to travel back in time exists. I’ve always felt that of all the stagings I’ve seen from 1990 onwards, and on tv, Jerome Robbins’ version interpreted the music best, and that may also have to do with the fact that good tv and filming technology had been developed in Robbins’ time, so if his work was misrepresented, he could always block a tv production from being aired, whereas we have no such record of Nijinsky’s own staging from his lifetime. I'm sure his own performances were far from boring! The other accounts of what Nijinsky went through is utterly horrible and make very sad reading,..... poor kid. The misrepresentation is further insult to injury, when there are so many eminent artists nowadays who are happy to share their personal stories in the interests of representation and diversity, and feel empowered and supported to go public. Perhaps the exhibition curators should have picked them instead of making damaging assumptions about Nijinsky. Edited July 23, 2023 by Emeralds Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LinMM Posted July 23, 2023 Share Posted July 23, 2023 (edited) I must have seen Nureyev as Faun in this ballet as went to all those Colisseum performances back in the 80’s but can’t remember much detail now ….assuming it was closer to the original ….though I’ve seen the Robbins version so many more times I’m more familiar with that. I’m pretty sure Fokine writes about Nijinsky and this ballet in his book but again although an absolutely fascinating read it’s a long time since I’ve read it!!! Im assuming it was chosen as a piece because of Debussy’s music rather than as any real homage to Mallarmé’s poem …although not that long since its publish date if the ballet is 1912. Apparently Mallarme’ is one of the most difficult French poets to translate into another language because of the way he used it and there was a joke around at the time that is there anybody publishing a translation of his poems into French!!!! So I wonder how familiar Nijinsky would have really been with his ideas when he was developing the character of the Faune. So he may have put his own interpretation on the Faune rather than how Mallarme’ would have meant it…..certainly nothing to do with “queerness” in the more modern meaning of the word! In Mallarme’s world I am supposing the Faune figure represents his struggle to express in language the ideal in a real world and the nymphs just out of his reach so not quite at home in either world in this case the sensual or the ethereal? I’ve never read the poem only what it’s supposed to be about and it seems Debussy has caught the strange dream like feeling of the poem in his music. When I see the ballet it is this strange dream like quality of other worldliness that I like the dancers to catch and the pervasive feeling of something unobtainable. I think that would do justice to Mallarme’ as well. I will have to find that Fokine book again as he at least saw the ballet first hand when Nijinsky performed it. Edited July 23, 2023 by LinMM Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MAB Posted July 23, 2023 Share Posted July 23, 2023 I find Cyril Beaumont the most reliable commentator on the Diaghilev ballets which he saw first hand. The problem is that we are looking back to a time when people would never dream of calling a spade a spade, therefore Beaumont refers to "the questionable character of Nijinski's movements". Beaumont also mentions the gasp from the audience. Certainly the ballet was toned down when the company took it to America and I suspect different versions of the ending co-exist. There are a great many accounts of Nijinski's life and it is generally thought that he wasn't naturally homosexual, However unlike the two successors to Diaghilev's affections he cannot be described as a sexual opportunist in the way both Massine and Lifar were. Nijinski was emotionally fragile and the life he found himself leading possibly contributed to his eventual mental collapse. 8 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sebastian Posted July 24, 2023 Share Posted July 24, 2023 (edited) What an interesting discussion. Recapturing what did (and did not) happen on stage in 1912 is difficult. There is a supposed quote by Nijinsky himself, to be found on the internet but not (so far as I can find) anywhere else so I won’t quote it. It is well-known that the editor of Le Figaro newspaper, Gaston Calmette, was scandalised by the performance so gave his front page over to an attack on the work. Here is what he published (in a translation from the 1930s):- A FAUX PAS Our readers will not find in its accustomed place under "Theatre," the criticism of my worthy collaborator Robert Brussel, upon the first performance of L'Après-midi d'un Faune, choreographic scene by Nijin-sky, directed and danced by that astonishing artist. I have eliminated that review. There is no necessity for me to judge Debussy's music, which, besides, does not of itself constitute a novelty, as it is nearly ten years old. But I am persuaded that all the readers of Figaro who were at the Châtelet yesterday will not object if I protest against the most extraordinary exhibition which they presumed to serve us as a profound production, performed with a precious art and a harmonious lyricism. Those who speak of art and poetry apropos of this spectacle make fun of us. It is neither a gracious epilogue nor a profound production. We have had a faun, incontinent, with vile movements of erotic bestiality and gestures of heavy shamelessness. That is all. And the merited boos were accorded the too-expressive pantomime of the body of an ill-made beast, hideous, from the front, and even more hideous in profile. These animal realities the true public will never accept. Edited July 24, 2023 by Sebastian 1 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sebastian Posted July 24, 2023 Share Posted July 24, 2023 And here is a useful recent scholarly discussion: https://www.alastairmacaulay.com/all-essays/utkeiypp64xvbxlj2pykvqm6inm2p1 3 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ondine Posted July 24, 2023 Author Share Posted July 24, 2023 (edited) "The recent productions of some of these works – Nijinsky’s ballet L’Après-midi d’un faune and his Bloomsbury ballet Jeux enjoying their first ever performances by the Royal Ballet – still have an amazing impact, throwing instincts about movement and feeling high into the air all these years later. When Carlos Acosta, as the faun, finally takes the muse’s shawl back to his lair, lies on top of it, and slightly jerks his pelvis, there is still a tangible sense of sexual outrage. The over-muscularity of the Royal Ballet’s male company takes something away from Nijinsky’s androgynous approach, but it is all still there, profoundly beautiful and melancholy, a pagan assault on every social sensibility. Fokine called it ‘pornographic filth’, but it was not that, it was just beyond all the bounds of convention. A matinee audience at the Royal Opera House today still seeks to avert their children’s eyes as the faun crawls after the shadow of his own desire, rutting into an ancient shawl" Andrew O'Hagan LRB 2000 https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v22/n14/andrew-o-hagan/you-gu-gu-and-i-gu-gu Edited July 24, 2023 by Ondine Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alison Posted July 24, 2023 Share Posted July 24, 2023 Was it really the first time the RB had danced L’Après-midi d’un faune? I don't remember it as such. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sebastian Posted July 24, 2023 Share Posted July 24, 2023 3 hours ago, Sebastian said: And here is a useful recent scholarly discussion: https://www.alastairmacaulay.com/all-essays/utkeiypp64xvbxlj2pykvqm6inm2p1 This online discussion, although it contains several of the famous de Meyer 1912 photographs of Nijinsky dancing the role, is missing a key image from the series. De Meyer also photographed the controversial final gesture of the ballet, an Image which is held by the New York Public Library. This photograph is reproduced in “The Art of Enchantment”, a collection of essays on the Ballets Russes edited by Nancy van Norman Baer and published in 1988. A scan of the book (the catalogue to an exhibition in San Francisco) can be found online via the Internet Archive. We do not know if the gesture is exactly what was seen on stage but one gets the general idea. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Suffolkgal Posted July 24, 2023 Share Posted July 24, 2023 I saw mukhamedov in it at the roh Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AnneMarriott Posted July 25, 2023 Share Posted July 25, 2023 12 hours ago, Suffolkgal said: I saw mukhamedov in it at the roh Ditto Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LinMM Posted July 25, 2023 Share Posted July 25, 2023 Was this the Robbins version at ROH? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sebastian Posted July 25, 2023 Share Posted July 25, 2023 One more source. For those who would be interested in a recent academic discussion of the music and the choreography (including what cymbals might signify at the climax of the work) Davinia Caddy has a detailed chapter in her book “The ballets russes and beyond”, published in 2012 by Cambridge University Press: “Nijinsky’s Faune revisited“. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AnneMarriott Posted July 25, 2023 Share Posted July 25, 2023 5 hours ago, LinMM said: Was this the Robbins version at ROH? No it was the reconstructed original. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sebastian Posted July 25, 2023 Share Posted July 25, 2023 33 minutes ago, Sebastian said: One more source. For those who would be interested in a recent academic discussion of the music and the choreography (including what cymbals might signify at the climax of the work) Davinia Caddy has a detailed chapter in her book “The ballets russes and beyond”, published in 2012 by Cambridge University Press: “Nijinsky’s Faune revisited“. Apologies, I should have checked before. This book, despite being only ten years old, is also available to read online for free via the Internet Archive, truly an extraordinary resource. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AnneMarriott Posted July 25, 2023 Share Posted July 25, 2023 22 hours ago, Suffolkgal said: I saw mukhamedov in it at the roh I witnessed his remarkable performance and was amused to read Ismene Brown's review including the memorable comment along the lines of, "when he (Mukahamedov) sniffed the nymph's scarf I nearly fell through my seat". 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LinMM Posted July 25, 2023 Share Posted July 25, 2023 Well slightly more sensitive than other things done to the nymphs scarf lol!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LinMM Posted July 25, 2023 Share Posted July 25, 2023 (edited) I was actually trying to read a translation of Mallarme’s poem on which the ballet is based yesterday….glad I didn’t have to study him for A level or at College!!! Andre Gide was enough for me! Edited July 25, 2023 by LinMM Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bridiem Posted July 25, 2023 Share Posted July 25, 2023 I'm afraid my mind is now wandering to how different choreographers might have interpreted Nijinsky's original Faun character, especially at the end: Akram Khan - a trapped, exploited Creature; cowering Mark Morris - a lyrical and happy goat/man; skipping Wayne McGregor - a fast-moving spiky animal with high extensions and some high-octane lighting; cool Crystal Pite - one of a whole flock of fauns running round the stage; communing Balanchine - a beautiful loner in a white leotard; haughty Ashton - an Isadora Duncan-type with a floaty scarf; tasteful MacMillan - doesn't bear thinking about 14 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zxDaveM Posted July 25, 2023 Share Posted July 25, 2023 I'm afraid I think Nijinsky was totally represented... 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pas de Quatre Posted July 25, 2023 Share Posted July 25, 2023 I think I shall have to find the original poem. We had Baudelaire's Fleurs du Mal on our syllabus (in the original French) and that is pretty evocative! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LinMM Posted July 25, 2023 Share Posted July 25, 2023 Bridiem in your category above I would say truest to Mallarme’ would then be the Balanchine!! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fonty Posted July 30, 2023 Share Posted July 30, 2023 (edited) On 25/07/2023 at 17:38, bridiem said: I'm afraid my mind is now wandering to how different choreographers might have interpreted Nijinsky's original Faun character, especially at the end: Akram Khan - a trapped, exploited Creature; cowering Mark Morris - a lyrical and happy goat/man; skipping Wayne McGregor - a fast-moving spiky animal with high extensions and some high-octane lighting; cool Crystal Pite - one of a whole flock of fauns running round the stage; communing Balanchine - a beautiful loner in a white leotard; haughty Ashton - an Isadora Duncan-type with a floaty scarf; tasteful MacMillan - doesn't bear thinking about You've missed out Matthew Bourne - Afternoon of a Nymph - she stays in the background, peeking out at some fauns cavorting with one another. Although having said that, he would probably go down the all male route. Edited July 30, 2023 by Fonty 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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