Nijinsky's Father Sees his Children Perform And Their Father Performs For Them
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Vaslav Nijinsky and his sister Bronislava Nijinska's Father, Thomas Nijinsky, also a dancer, came to St. Petersburg to see his children dance. Bronislava describes that memory and how excited she was to have her Father back with the family. She describes this whole event in her own words.
"I barely remember the performance itself, but I do recall Father in the intermission hugging and embracing me tenderly, and saying, "You were very good and you must continue to work hard."
"Of Vaslav's dancing in the Student Performance I remember more from the rehearsals than from the evening itself. In A Midsummer Night's Dream he had a very impressive solo. Fokine's choreography inspired Nijinsky. His dancing did not try to astonish or amaze by emphasizing the technical difficulties. Nijinsky illuminated the whole stage, flashing and scintillating in the air like a shooting star. One critic declared that "Vol des Papilons" was a masterpiece in which Fokine had featured his graduating student, Smirnova, and Oboukhov's student Nijinsky. "They fluttered above the stage in their pas de deux, their dance interlaced in uninterrupted flight..."
"I thought that seeing his son dancing on the stage in the most famous Theatre in all Russia and hearing the praises and applause would make Father proud, but to my surprise he did not seem at all astonished. He was stingy with his praise and even quite severe in his criticism. While admitting Vaslav had great talent, he felt that he had a long way to go to perfect his dancing and would have to work a great deal more in order to attain the title of premier danseur in the Imperial Theatres."
"Suddenly he added, Remember, Vaslav, that in a pas de deux you do not have to show yourself off as an adroit porteur..."
"Inside myself I knew that this word porteur must have wounded Vaslav, but he answered calmly, "On the stage, I do not try to show myself off at all. I am inspired by the dance and I also am dancing in the pas de deux. I perform who is mounted for me by my teachers-- the premiers danseurs, Fokine and Oboukhov."
"Perhaps Father's criticism was deliberate, so that Vaslav would not become self-satisfied, but his words were not well chosen and only hurt Vaslav's feelings . It also seemed to me that Father did not understand the nature of Vaslav's talent, though it must be pointed out that neither did Vaslav's partners at that time. In the minds of the two graduating students, Elena Smirnova from Fokine's class and Ludmila Schollar from Kulichevskaya's class, Nijinsky was simply the male partner in the pas de deux, whose only role was to support them well and comfortably sur pointe, deux to assist in their pirouettes, and to follow each of their pas. Each of them was noted for their purity of her ballet technique, though each had her own style. Smirnova created the impression of being a little too severe and harsh, while Schollar was soft and coquettish. As graduating students in the Annual Student Performance of 1906, both were tensely occupied with the execution of their own difficult pas and with the purity of their technique, as could be seen on their faces, whereas Nijinsky's ease and individual style had been strikingly apparent through Fokine's and Kulichevskaya's choreography."- Quote from Bronislava Nijinska on her Father seeing them perform on stage.
When you hear what happened and the different opinions from Nijinsky and his Father, you see a clashing of old view vs. new view. Nijinsky's Father had been taught that the male dancer is not the star but to support the ballerina. However, Nijinsky, from his feelings, had his style and felt the dance. The artistry came naturally to Nijinsky. There was no tension when he danced on stage, making the audience more interested in watching him. His sister Bronislava even recognized this, which set him apart from the other graduating students who she said did not have the relaxed face like Nijinsky did.
The next day after the performance, Nijinsky and his sister show their father around the Imperial Theatrical School. Nijinsky's Father surprises his son with a compliment and performs for just his children. Bronislava Nijinska describes this memory in her own words.
"The next morning Vaslav offered to show Father the Imperial Theatrical School where we had spent many years. I went with them. We entered through the artists' entrance and came to the large rehearsal hall. We climbed the narrow stairs leading up to the open gallery overlooking the hall and walked along it to the boy's section of the School. It was the beginning of Holy Week, and everyone had been dismissed for the Easter vacation. The dancing halls were empty."
"In the advanced ballet classroom Father paused in front of the mirror. He began humming a tune and casually traced a few dancing steps."
"Vatsa, yesterday you showed yourself to be an excellent classical dancer, and though you seem to know quite a lot about dancing..." Father chuckled, "I want to show you some of my own dances and pas. Perhaps someday, who knows, they may be of some use to you."
"I had not seen Father dance on the stage since the performance in Novaya Derevnia at the Arcadia Theatre in 1897. Now I watched spellbound, one dance after the other of technical difficulty I had never seen before, and even to this day I cannot understand the mechanics of a pas from it's follow-up movement, given the force and speed of the dance he executed so effortlessly and with such clear-cut precision. There was no end to our amazement at the virtuosity displayed in the classical pirouettes, or the character turns, all at a whirlwind speed, crouched down close to the ground where, as he rotated faster and faster, the outlines of his body blurred until they disappeared like the blades of a rotating fan."
"Father's jump, like Vaslav's, was enormous, and he too possessed that special gift, the ability to linger to hover in the air and then drop down at will, either softly and gently or as hard and fast as stone. In Russian dance, Father astonished us when he covered half the room in one leap-- he started this huge jump from the right corner, diagonally across from where we were watching him, He landed in the middle of the room, in the crouched position of the prissyatka, then he glided onwards on the inside edge of the soles of his boots as if on ice skates. We were startled to see him rushing towards us at an ever- increasing speed, which he controlled so that he pulled up short, barely missing, it seemed to us, the front of the piano bench where we were sitting."
Nijinska's recount of this memory is so vivid that her description lets you visualize what they saw with such detail that you feel like you were there and can feel their surprise and awe at their Father's dancing. Bronislava Nijinska had such a way to describe events that you feel like you were there yourself since you can picture it like a scene from a movie.
She describes this memory in her own words on what made Nijinsky's famous.
"Father demonstrated with great virtuosity some pas from the lezginka, the dance that had made the name Nijinsky famous in Tiflis and Baku many years ago, before we children were born, Mother had often told us how thrilled she had been to dance the lezginka with Father on the stages of the theatres of the Caucasus. She would recall their tremendous successes there and describe the many beautiful and valuable gifts, since lost to the pawnshop, that had been presented to them on on the stage. But, she told us, their greatest reward had been the appreciation and applause from the people of the Caucasus who had packed the theatres to see their native dances performed by the Polish dancers, the Nijinsky's."
"Father also showed us several amazing pas seemingly impossible within the routine mechanics of dancing . Vaslav was genuinely surprised, but later after Father had left he said, "These dancing tricks are of no use to me... they bring dancing closer to acrobatics than to art."
I guess it shouldn't be so surprising that Nijinsky would respond that way since his Father criticized him the previous day. Still, then the next day, Nijinsky was complimented by his Father. However, Nijinsky seemed to let people's words affect him where he would hold grudges and how Nijinsky's Father lived his life Nijinsky disapproved of; this might explain the response. However, Bronislava Nijinska's opinion was opposite her brother's on their Father and she even was so perceptive to pick up on the traits their Father had that they had inherited from him."While watching Father dance, I had noticed how some of his physical traits had passed to both Vaslav and me. Our legs and feet had the same strength and shape of musculature."-Quote from Bronislava Nijinska on her memory of her Father dancing for her and her brother.
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