NEUMEIER’S NIJINSKY

DANCE

25 Feb

Recently landed: God of Dance

Gracia’s written response to The Australian Ballet’s John Neumeier’s Nijinsky, especially for Fjord Review.

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To Vaslaz Nijinsky, the circle was the embodiment of a complete, perfect movement from which everything in life could be based.[i] The intersection of two circles form an almond-like shape,[ii] and express the interdependence of opposing yet complimentary forces—life and death, heaven and earth.[iii] In Nijinsky’s intimately proportioned drawings on paper with crayon and pencil, you can see these two shapes repeated over and over. The complete line that is the circle, the circular curve that is an organising principle, contain an energy that belies their scale, and they speak of Nijinsky, not solely as an artist, but as a person. All the more so because they were drawn not long before he retired from dance, between 1918 and 1919. Criss-crossing back in time, they have a dynamism, and a rhythm. So, too, John Neumeier’s Nijinsky, which faithfully, soulfully, like the drawings, through recurring motifs and a retracing of steps, delivers a powerful blow. As he lays bare the fragility of Nijinsky, Neumeier lays bare the same said fragility of the human condition. Into a two-hour ballet, told over two acts, Neumeier reveals Nijinsky as a dancer and choreographer, and Nijinsky as a person.

Nijinsky was last staged by The Australian Ballet in 2016. Opening the 2025 Melbourne season, it found me retracing my own steps for this welcome return. Some nine years on, several cast members are also retracing their steps, including Callum Linnane and Jake Mangakahia in the title role.

[i] Herertus Gassner, ‘Der Tanz der Farben und Formen,’ in Dance of Colours — Nijinsky’s Eye and the Abstraction (Tanz der Farben — Nijinsky’s Auge und die Abstraktion), catalogue to the exhibition, Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg, 2009, p. 48.

[ii] Called a mandola or a vesica piscis, literally, “fish’s bladder.”

[iii] Vaslaz Nijinsky’s Untitled (Arcs and Segments: Lines), 1918–1919, crayon and pencil on paper, in the collection of John Neumeier, Inventing Abstraction 1910–1925 exhibition, Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), https://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2012/inventingabstraction/?work=167, accessed 23rd February, 2025.