La Nijinska: Choreographer of the Modern, by Lynn Garafola – Maggie Watson reviews

Lynn Garafola’s biography of Bronislava Nijinska sets her life and work in the context of the cultural and political changes that shaped the twentieth century.  Chiefly remembered in the United Kingdom as Vaslav Nijinsky’s sister, and the choreographer of just two works, Les Biches and Les Noces, this book resituates Nijinska as a huge creative force, whose influence has had a seminal impact on ballet throughout the Western world.

Garafola’s sixteen chapters brilliantly knit together Nijinska’s personal and professional life, revealing a complex and troubled woman who was truly driven to create dances.  There was continually tension both between Nijinska’s compulsion to work and her desire to look after her dearly loved family, and between her professional achievements and her tragic personal life, which included her brother’s decline into mental illness, the death of her son in a car crash and her unconsummated love for the singer Fedor Chaliapin.

 

Unfolding Gesture: Movement, Inscription, Music: DANSOX Summer School 2021. 10, 11 &12 July 2021 at St Hilda’s College, Oxford – Maggie Watson reports

The third annual DANSOX summer school was a scholarly investigation into the relationship between dance and inscription.  It treated both concepts in the broadest sense: ‘dance’ encompassed Western movement styles ranging from the Baroque to the contemporary; ‘inscription’ embraced not only the written word and notation, but also the traces preserved in art, photography, film and the dancing body itself.  The format was hybrid, with a small socially distanced audience present in the Jacqueline du Pré Music Building, and a recorded live stream for external participants.

Alastair Macaulay’s opening lecture looked at literary sources of inspiration for dance and the role of notation in protecting, preserving, and challenging our perceptions of works.  Macaulay’s wide ranging discussion, liberally illustrated with film clips and photographs, raised themes developed in the subsequent lectures and dance workshops.  He noted the subtle ways in which choreographers such as Merce Cunningham have drawn on a literary sources, and cited Pam Tanowitz’ interweaving of dance, music and poetry in her Four Quartets.  Macaulay also discussed the ways in which dances change over time; the problems and inadequacies of recordings; the significance of context, and the readability or otherwise of notation, whether that of Vladimir Stepanov or Vaslav Nijinsky.

 

Evolution: Acosta Danza, Sadler’s Wells, 21 November 2019 (evening performance) – Maggie Watson reviews

Acosta Danza presented four works to a large and enthusiastic audience at Sadler’s Wells last night. The evening opened with Raúl Reinoso’s Satori, a piece that brought together movement, music, costumes and lighting with strong dramatic effect, unifying them in the dance. The visual impact was powerful right from the start, as spotlights picked out dancers, male and female, surrounded by huge circular skirts that spread around them on the stage. Billowing cloth created the illusion of a mountainous landscape viewed from above, as a dancer bourréed on pointe from side to side, facing the audience, her arms extended, like a hovering bird.

 

The Chosen Maiden by Eva Stachniak – Susannah Harris-Wilson reviews

The Chosen Maiden, a novel by Eva Stachniak, is difficult to place. The “chosen maiden” of the title refers at one level to the young girl chosen by a community for ritual sacrifice in Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. The ballet depicting this ritual was choreographed by Nijinsky; and it is Nijinsky’s sister, Bronislava Nijinska, who is the protagonist of Stachniak’s book.

It appears from Stachniak’s account that Bronislava missed dancing the role of the chosen maiden in Paris despite longing to do so. She had become pregnant just as rehearsals for Rite’s opening began and so she was unable to fulfil perhaps the deepest of her many ambitious dreams: to dance the part of the chosen maiden under her brother’s direction and for its dramatic opening. However, as the novel portrays her, Bronislava’s often sad, even tragic, life somehow carried – bore sacrificially – the many painful experiences of her birth family, her country, her profession, her gender and her personal relationships. In this respect the rejections and losses of her life represent the painful submissions of the ballet’s chosen maiden.

 

DANSOX: ‘Nijinska’ Lecture by Professor Lynn Garafola, Jacqueline du Pré Music Building 10th November 2016

DANSOX presents a guest lecture by distinguished Professor Lynn Garafola (Columbia University) who will discuss her work on Bronislawa Nijinska, one of the twentieth century’s greatest modernist choreographers.  Professor Garafola will explore Nijinska’s position as Nijinsky’s sister and her career in a male-dominated group of directors and choreographers associated with the Ballets Russes.  She will also talk about the creation of iconic works of the Twenties by Nijinska including Les Noces, Les Biches, and Le Train Bleu, as well as less well-known pieces, and describe Nijinska’s ventures inside and outside the Diaghilev circle.

Date:  Thursday 10th November, 17.30-19.30

Venue:  Jacqueline du Pré Music Building, St Hilda’s College, Cowley Place, Oxford OX4

The event is free and open to all and will be followed by a drinks reception in the JdP Foyer.

You can register to attend here

To find out more about DANSOX and its programme of events:

susan.jones@ell.ox.ac.uk

http://www.torch.ox.ac.uk/dansox

 

Nijinsky’s Last Jump: Company Chordelia at The North Wall, Wednesday 4th May 2016

The North Wall is delighted to announce that Scotland-based Company Chordelia will bring Nijinsky’s Last Jump to Oxford as the only English venue on its UK tour.  At Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2015, the show gained wide acclaim amongst critics, described by The Guardian as ‘one of the gems of this year’s Edinburgh fringe.’

Created, directed and choreographed by Company Chordelia’s Artistic Director Kally Lloyd-Jones,  Nijinsky’s Last Jump combines theatre and dance to evoke the legendary 20th Century dancer Vaslav Nijinky’s journey from global success to the desolate isolation of mental illness. As the passionate obsession of the young Nijinsky (Darren Brownlie) comes face to face with the searching inner life of the older Nijinsky (James Bryce), this sharp and tender show portrays a poignant intimacy of genius and madness, youth and age, both the performing and private self.  Inspired by the rhythmic obsession of Nijinsky’s diaries, Young and Old Nijinsky consider their life together, on and off stage, trying to make sense of the loss of self.

 

‘My two years with Anna Pavlova’ by Serge Oukrainsky – Maggie Watson reviews

Serge Oukrainsky’s gossipy and sometimes catty memoire is very personal account, told largely from memory, of the ballet world in the early 20^th century.  After a difficult childhood spent shuttling between Russia and France on his father’s whim, a pawn between estranged parents, aged 15 he embarked on a career as a painter.  He was over 25 when a chance remark at a dinner gave him the opportunity to take ballet classes with Ivan Clustine, initially with a view to partnering Nathalie Trouhanowa in some performances at the Chatelet Theatre.  In 1913 he joined Pavlova’s company, also meeting his long-term companion Andreas Pavley, and the book tells the story of his travels, including a narrow escape from Paris in 1914.

Anna Pavlova is barely mentioned before chapter 10.  At first, her performance failed to impress Oukrainsky (partly on account of her costumes), with the exception of Papillion [sic]:  “she appeared to me incomparable.  She was indeed a true butterfly … “. 

 

Boston Ballet at the London Coliseum, 7 July 2013 (matinée) – Maggie Watson reviews

 Boston Ballet’s final performance at the London Coliseum began and ended with George Balanchine:  Serenade to open the programme, and Symphony in Three Movements to close it, with Vaslav Nijinsky’s Afternoon of a Faun and Jorma Elo’s Plan to B in between.

This Serenade was a very different to the Maryinsky’s, which I saw in London in 2009.  Boston Ballet’s dancers were less perfectly uniform in appearance and style than the Russians, but what they lacked in precision they made for with a confident athletic vigour that gave them ownership of the ballet.  Afternoon of a Faun was less successful.