Nijinsky Embodies The Blue Bird

Photo Credit: Nijinsky in the Siamese Dance in Les Orientales, 1910

Vaslav Ninjinsky gave a mind blowing performance when he took the stage as Blue Bird from The Sleeping Beauty Ballet Bronislava Nijinska recounts this memory in her own words.

 

 "Three days after the first performance of Le Pavillon d' Armide, Vaslav's dream was realized. On Wednesday, November 28, 1907, he was to dance the grand pas de deux, "Princess Florine and the Blue Bird," in Act II of The Sleeping Beauty."

"Nijinsky was only eighteen years old when he was chosen to appear as the Blue Bird on the stage of the Maryinsky Theatre. It was most unusual that such an important dancing part as the Blue Bird should be entrusted to an Artist in his very first ballet season in the Imperial Theatres,"

"Princess Florine was to be danced  by Lydia Kyaksht. I was not familiar with this excellent classical dancer, for soon after her graduation from the School, in 1902, she had only just returned to St. Petersburg, and one of her first appearances in an important role was to be Princess Florine in The Sleeping Beauty. "

"Ever since the brilliant performance and the creation of the Blue Bird by Enrico Cecchetti on January 3, 1890, the grand pas de deux, "Princess Florine and the Blue Bird," had been danced by the best Artists of the Imperial Theatres. Over the years an unshakable routine had been established for the presentation and execution of this pas de deux, through the artistic interpretation of the Blue Bird was left to the dancer himself."

"As students of the Imperial Theatrical School we had seen the Blue Bird  danced by leading Artists as Nikolai Legat, Georgi Kyasht, Mikhail Oboukhov, and Mikhail Fokine. Through each dancer was free to give his own artistic rendering of the Blue Bird, most of them were satisfied to leave everything "as it was" and not bring any artistic innovation to the dance."

"Vaslav had also seen the Blue Bird many times from on the stage of the Maryinsky, ever since the time when he had taken part in "Le Petit Poucet et ses Fres" in the last act of The Sleeping Beauty. No doubt each time something wonderful had resounded in his dancing body. He had not tried consciously to memorize the dance, but the melody of the music and the choreographic image of Petipa's Blue Bird had merged and left an everlasting impression on the young student."

"It was the custom that young artists should learn their assigned parts from their older colleagues, and that the leading dancers and soloists should work on their roles and the preparation of their dances independently of the ballet master and the regisseur."

"Nijinsky could have asked his former teacher Oboukhov to show him the variation and the solo from the coda of the Blue Bird, but being already familiar with the dance, he was creating his own dance-image of the Blue Bird. So he worked alone a great deal. He did not turn to anyone to give him artistic direction."

"I had seen Fokine dance the Blue Bird at the same time that he was introducing new artistic expressions and innovations in the ballet he was mounting for the Annual Student Performances, but even he, like all the others, performed the Blue Bird, performing with the Princess Florine as guests at the ball on the occasion of the marriage of Princess Aurora and Prince Desire."

"Fokine's Blue Bird did not fly but danced in a classical ballet manner, assuming striking poses and using prolonged pauses to emphasize the end of the sequence of pas. Only the large rigid wings mounted on a wire frame served to identify the character as a bird."

"All the costumes for The Sleeping Beauty had been designed by Ivan Vsevolozhsky, Director of the Imperial Theatres from 1881 to 1899. The costume for the Blue Bird was similar in style to the ballet-costume worn by Louis XIV in his court ballets at Versailles. The full-skirted coat was in two shades of blue, and both the dark top and the lighter blue skirt were richly ornamented. A wide blue ribbon was caught on the left shoulder and then draped across the chest and the back to tie in a bulky bow above the right hip. The large wings extended upwards from the shoulder in a curved shape and covered the arms and the hands. A crown of blue feathers completed the costume."

"I never knew how Vaslav, only eighteen years old, persuaded the Administration of the Maryinsky Theatre to alter the original design and make a new costume for him. Instead of the elaborate full-skirted coat Vaslav wore a regular ballet tunic and short trunks over tights. The entire costume was blue, a slightly deeper blue that the darker shade of the original coat. For Vaslav's Blue Bird there was no supporting wire frame for the wings."

 

"In the original costume a dancer could only performs the pas with his legs; his body was encumbered by the large rigid wings. In the new costume Vaslav's arm-wings and his body moved together, as do the wings and body of a bird-freely in the air."

"I saw Vaslav during the one of the final rehearsals of the last act of Sleeping Beauty when Legat and Sergeyev were rehearsing all the participants. All the artists except Vaslav were wearing their usual practice clothes, but Vaslav was trying out his dance wearing his new costume for the Blue Bird."

"The birdlike wings were part of his dancing body; his arms did not bend at the elbow, but the movement as in the wing of a bird was generated in the shoulder;  the movements of the dancing body were the movements of a bird in  flight. A fluttering motion of the hands at the wrist and the Blue Bird's wings trembled and fluttered; the Blue Bird was soaring and singing its bird's song, and Nijinsky's body was singing in his dancing flight."

"He was creating dance-image of a Blue Bird, an image that had become a living entity, part of himself and his dancing body. Nijinsky was following his creative path on his own at this time; there was no one to give him artistic direction; neither Diaghilev nor Bakst nor Benois was at his side to guide him."

"The performance of The Sleeping Beauty took place on November 28, 1907. The appearance of Nijinsky in the Blue Bird was unforgettable. Nijinsky flies on in an enormous leap, a prolongated grand assemble. The arm-wings are open wide, extended. The Blue Bird soars- two light motions of the shoulders, a flutter of the wings, and the Blue Bird seems to linger in flight. A slow sweeping movement of the arm-wings, as if gathering new strength, and then a strong upsweeping movement of the wings create the impression that the Blue Bird is rising still higher in its flight. Then smoothly imperceptibly, Nijinsky comes down on half toe only to fly upwards again."

"One of the amazing features of Nijinsky's dance was that it was impossible to perceive when he was finishing one pas and when he was starting the next. All the preparations were concealed in the shortest possible time, the very instant of the foot touching the floor of the stage."

"On a background of persistently repeated entrechat-six, entrechat-buit, entrechat-dix, a whole range of movements played in the body of Nijinsky: vibrating, trembling, fluttering, flying. It seemed that after each entrechat Nijinsky did not come down to touch the floor but was flying higher and higher like a bird soaring upwards. It was one continuous glissando in which all the entrechats flowed together in an upward flight."

 

"The admiring audience burst into an unrestrained thunder of applause and shouts of "Bis." Their enthusiasm was aroused not only by the unprecedented virtuosity in the technique of the pas, or the height and lightness of the jumps. To all this was added something else - magic- the dancing-image of the Blue Bird."

"His coda solo, the pas brise vole, was an absolutely extraordinary dancing phenomenon."

"How can one find words to capture the essence of the Dance? How to bring it to reality? How to describe the dancing-image created of a bird in flight?"

"A vision-impression- as if the Blue Bird is flying low over the swift current of an impetuous stream... plays in the spray of water, splashes  around the stream, shakes itself with a flutter of trembling wings... then again flies upwards and hovers, rocking backwards and forwards in flight over the stream. As both legs are lifted high in front and flutter in brise vole, they are covered by a fast passing movement of the trembling wings as the body bends half-forwards. Another fast movement and Nijinsky changes position during the jump to arch his body backwards to the utmost."

 

"It seems that Nijinsky's body is continuously suspended in the air, without touching the floor, now bent forwards, now arched backwards, swinging backwards and forwards in the air. The arm-wings in wide movements, now folded, now open, seem to hold him in the air , his own atmosphere, his own element."

"This movement brise vole in the coda is repeated twice on the diagonal of the stage from the last wing to the first wing, ending in a great number of pirouettes, to ten to twelve at top speed, prestissimo."

"The regular audience of the Maryinsky Theatre knew the performance of the The Sleeping Beauty by heart. Each dance was so familiar to them in every detail that they could well judge and appreciate each performer and reward him accordingly with their  applause."

"The triumph of Nijinsky as the Blue Bird was overwhelming. Nijinsky had in no way changed the choreography of Petipa it had served him as a theme for his dancing variation so that his performance had become his own composition. In creating his dance- it's movements, rhythm, expression, and character- Nijinsky had created a whole new theatrical image of the Blue Bird."

"Here everything in his creative work was remarkably and newly found- the artistic technique of the dance, the makeup, the costume. Nijinsky was guided by innate genius. His every movement sang the music of Tchaikovsky. The body of Nijinsky had seemed to lose it's human contours and design a bird's flight in the air, the flight of the enchanted bluebird of Perrault's fairy tale."- Quote from Bronislava Nijinska on her brother Vaslav Nijinsky performing Blue Bird 

 

 

Bronislava is very descriptive on this event where her brother Nijinsky performed Blue Bird. She talks about  the costumes and how they were designed and how her brother persuaded the Maryinsky administration to make a new costume for this role for him.

When Nijinsky takes stage as the blue bird he embodies the blue bird and many times Nijinska says her brother took flight and she herself was perplexed how he made himself suspend in air continuously.

She also talked about how the audience was amazed by his performance and they believed he was the blue bird and for that they  gave him a thunderous applause. Which I'm sure at eighteen years old he had just performed the role he had always dreamed of doing which had to have been a dream come true for him.

This performance Nijinska said Nijinsky made this role his own without changing the choreography he still separated himself from the previous who had danced the role. Nijinsky embodied the blue bird and as Nijinska said you forgot her brother was human you only thought of him as a bird.

 You can feel what she is saying is that her brother is a phenomenon something the dance world has never experienced before, the genius of Nijinsky and he was just getting started.