Nijinsky Starts Teaching Dance

 

Vaslav Nijinsky during a photo shoot, 1909

Vaslav Nijinsky's mother, to earn money for the family, taught ballet lessons at the house. Nijinsky would watch his mother teach so he could learn what to apply to his teaching. He started to divide up his time by teaching his students. One of his students was his sister Bronislava Nijinska, and his other students were Lydia Alexandrovna Shiraeva, and the younger sister of Nijinsky's first admirer's Elena Sechnenova-Ivanova.

Bronislava, at times, described she felt unfairness with her brother because he always picked on her in class but later, she was appreciative of his teaching her lessons because all of his corrections helped her as a dancer. She describes this memory in her own words.

 

"At the Imperial Dance School the only lessons in the Teaching of Dance were for Ballroom Dancing , and that was only taught in the last year before graduation from the School, so Vaslav and I were particularly interested in watching Mother's classes. She taught her students the basic classical ballet steps-- glissade, chasse,  pas de basque, ballonne, pas de bourree. She then explained to us that these steps  are the basis of all other nonclassical dances, whether character or ballroom dances. She soon taught her class to dance a polonaise, a polka, a waltz , a marzurka, a quadrille, a minuet, a galop, and Hungarian and Spanish dance steps. She also worked very hard on their grace-- the movements of their hands, arms, and bodies, and how they walked . Within two years Mother's students were considered the "elite" of the ballet in light opera and musical comedies."

"Another reason for Vaslav's interest in watching Mother's lessons was that he has already begun giving preparatory dancing lessons to the seven-year-old sister of Elena Sechnenova-Ivanova. Vaslav had met Elena in the School, where she was a drama student. The boys of the advanced ballet classes were always invited to the drama students' classes for ballroom dancing, character dancing, movement, and fencing, to be an example to the male drama students, many of whom were rather stiff onstage."

"In these classes with the drama students Vaslav was the regular partner of Schenova-Ivanova so I heard all about her from him: her beauty, her theatrical talent, her intelligence, her education, and her understanding of all the arts, especially ballet. She was indeed beautiful, Two years older than Vaslav, she was tall and slender, with ash-colored hair, very fine features, and big gray-blue eyes. She was feminine and graceful, stately and aristocratic. She was also the very first admirer of the young Nijinsky. She had seen his dancing at the Student Performance of 1905 and been delighted with his unusual talent. Her father, a General, was the Supervisor of the Circuit Court in St. Petersburg. Their home, Vaslav used to go to give his lessons to her young sister, was a government apartment in the the Circuit Court Building."

 "The  second month of the vacation, Vaslav also began to give his lessons in classical dancing. At the end of the School year, the mother of a student in my class had approached Vaslav and asked him to give her daughter, Lydia Alexandrovna Shiraeva, lessons to help her get her pink dress, the second-highest dancing award in the School. Vaslav agreed on the condition that his sister Bronia, who had already had her pink dress for a year and a half attend the class and study with Lydia."

"Before we began our lessons with Vaslav, I had to buy dancing shoes. Vaslav accompanied me to Liftshed, the supplier of dancing shoes to the School, and watched attentively as I tried on the dancing shoes made of coarse, gray unbleached linen, with hard soles and the semi-hard "box" toes that we wore to dance in the School. He took the shoes in his hand, looked it over inside and out, tried to bend the sole, and told me decisively that I must instead buy men's black soft leather shoes like the ones he himself wore."

"It was impossible to convince Vaslav that one could not exercise on toe in men's soft ballet shoes. His answer was short:

 

"As you wish.... I am not going to teach you to dance in these shoes that are as hard as boxes!"

"I had to submit. Only later did I understand that Vaslav was right and appreciate how great is the significance of dancing shoes in the quality of dance."

"Our classes took place every day from eleven o'clock until one in the afternoon. The room  in the Shiraeva apartment where we studied was on the first floor, so we did not have to worry about knocking plaster from the ceilings below on anyone's head and could jump freely. However, the room itself did not have a very high ceiling, and whenever Vaslav showed us pas with jumps he had to hold back on height of the jump."

"A great deal in Vaslav's lessons was new for us, especially preparation for jumps, In the School we took all the power for the jump from the knees, from the demi-plie, and only as we left the floor were the instep and foot stretched."

"Vaslav taught us to feel the floor not only with the foot but also with the toes, and then, simultaneously, the quickly stretched body and the power of the arch and the instep would throw the body upwards for the jump."

"I made great progress and improved the quality of my elevation as Vaslav, in his exercises for jumps, developed the elasticity and strength of my arch and instep. I no longer needed the hard inner sole of the toe shoes to keep my toes from bending over, I stood well on toe and by the end of the vacation I was able to turn two or three pirouettes and could do sixteen fouettes sur pointe in my soft men's shoes."

"During the lessons I often felt that Vaslav picked on me, continuously making me repeat  the same pas and giving me many more instructions, while with Shiraeva, who was not his sister, he was polite and patient and let her wear the same hard gray toe shoes that we wore in the School without saying anything about them."

"I did not realize the progress I was making during those summer lessons with Vaslav until I returned to the School and saw the amazement of my teacher, Kulichevskaya. Then I understood and valued what Vaslav lessons had done for me."

"Those two months of Vaslav's classes were full of dancing discoveries and were to lay the foundation for the development of my technique and dancing achievements, Within three months, before Christmas, I received the white dress-- the School's highest award for dancing, usually not given before graduation year. For this year in Kulichevskaya's class, only two  white dresses were awarded, The other girl to be honored was my friend Frossia Georgievkaya."

"Lydia  Shiraeva's dream also came true when, at the very beginning of the school year, she received the pink dress." - Quote from Bronislava Nijinska on her brother Vaslav Nijinsky's teaching.

Even though Nijinska thought her brother was hard on her and not the other student, I believe he knew Nijinska better because she was his sister. He knew she was capable of incredible ability, so he demanded more and expected more from her. That reason and because she applied herself so much and gave her dancing her all, she improved so much in her dancing, fulfilling her brother Nijinsky's expectations got her the white dress sooner than she thought because she put the hard work in during his lessons. The other student Shiraeva got her wish when she received the pink dress, so everything Nijinsky said he would do he fulfilled successfully.