ballet great baryshnikov steps into nijinskys shoes
Last Updated : GMT 06:49:16
Arab Today, arab today
Arab Today, arab today
Last Updated : GMT 06:49:16
Arab Today, arab today

Ballet great Baryshnikov steps into Nijinsky's shoes

Arab Today, arab today

Arab Today, arab today Ballet great Baryshnikov steps into Nijinsky's shoes

Dream casting: Mikhail Baryshnikov
Paris - AFP

Dream castings don't come much better than Mikhail Baryshnikov playing Vaslav Nijinsky -- one great ballet dancer playing another.

Baryshnikov, now 68, is the star of "Letter to a Man", a one-person theatre show by the acclaimed American director Robert Wilson which follows Nijinsky's slide into insanity.

The Russian dance genius, who had revolutionised ballet with his choregraphy for Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring" while he was still in his early twenties, went slowly mad after his former lover, the impresario Serge Diaghilev, cut him lose.

Diaghilev had bedded Nijinsky and made him the leading man of his legendary company the Ballets Russes after spotting the 19-year-old prodigy at the Mariinsky theatre in St Petersburg in 1908.

Now more than a century later, Wilson has dramatised Nijinsky's searing and scandalous diaries, in which he excoriated Diaghilev.

It is, as Baryshnikov admits, a dance show in which he doesn't actually dance.

"It's more body language, it's not really dance," said the man once described by the New York Times critic Clive Barnes as "the most perfect dancer I have ever seen".

His face whited up, and wearing top hat and tails on stage, Baryshnikov has lost none of his charisma.

The former star of Russia's Kirov Ballet and later American Ballet Theatre, who still does his bar exercises every morning, said "Nijinsky was always important for me" -- even though physically the two are very different.

- 'Strange creature' -

Baryshnikov said Nijinsky was "a kind of universal actor. At that time, the level of male dance was not of the highest level, it was the ballerinas and divas" like Anna Pavlova that dominated,

"Then suddenly this very strange creature arrived, not very tall, not very beautiful in fact, with a kind of heavy musculature but of extraordinary strange proportions." 

Nijinsky did not have "a classical body. It was very developed and at the same time very soft, very ambivalent sexually, and he was mesmerising to watch, every role was so different. He was a true cameleon."

Baryshnikov, who has mostly lived in New York since defecting from the Soviet Union in 1974, said he had met Nijinsky's wife Romola as well as his two daughters Kyra and Tamara.

"Tamara came to see this show in Los Angeles," the dancer born in Latvia told AFP just before it opened Thursday in Paris and will run to January 21.

"She is now 96 years old, she lives in Arizona and she is remarkable -- a 96-year-old young woman really."

- Diaghilev not to blame -

While Baryshnikov says he was moved by playing such a great artist losing his mind, he does not blame Diaghilev for Nijinsky's fate.

"I don't know what would have happened if he had stayed with Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes. Probably it was genetic. His brother went to an asylum and his mother later on, and his daughter Kyra, who I knew at the end of her life," also suffered from mental illness, he said.

But the fascination with the early 20th century's greatest dancer who descended into madness at only 29 endures.

"He wrote the diary in six weeks, and then nothing. He retreated into darkness and silence into the end of his life," Baryshnikov added. Nijinsky died aged 61 in London.

For his own part, Baryshnikov does not miss dancing with the world's best ballet companies -- "there's life also beyond that" -- and claims he wants "to retire one day".

There is little sign of that yet, however. "Letter to a Man" is his second collaboration with Wilson after the acclaimed comedy "The Old Woman", where his double act with Hollywood star Willem Dafoe was compared to such partnerships as Laurel and Hardy and Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. 

He also runs the Baryshnikov Arts Center in New York and is performing in his one-man show "Brodsky/Baryshnikov" based on the poems of the Russian Nobel laureate Joseph Brodsky.

 

arabstoday
arabstoday

Name *

E-mail *

Comment Title*

Comment *

: Characters Left

Mandatory *

Terms of use

Publishing Terms: Not to offend the author, or to persons or sanctities or attacking religions or divine self. And stay away from sectarian and racial incitement and insults.

I agree with the Terms of Use

Security Code*

ballet great baryshnikov steps into nijinskys shoes ballet great baryshnikov steps into nijinskys shoes

 



Name *

E-mail *

Comment Title*

Comment *

: Characters Left

Mandatory *

Terms of use

Publishing Terms: Not to offend the author, or to persons or sanctities or attacking religions or divine self. And stay away from sectarian and racial incitement and insults.

I agree with the Terms of Use

Security Code*

ballet great baryshnikov steps into nijinskys shoes ballet great baryshnikov steps into nijinskys shoes

 



GMT 16:16 2014 Wednesday ,10 September

Samirah Ibrahim receives Saudi cultural attaché

GMT 09:32 2017 Sunday ,24 September

China confirms will limit oil exports to North Korea

GMT 19:56 2016 Saturday ,17 September

Typhoon Meranti death toll rises to 28

GMT 09:40 2018 Monday ,01 January

OIC Summit opens in Kazakhstan

GMT 06:37 2015 Monday ,07 December

Iran film directors protest colleague's jail term

GMT 18:37 2017 Friday ,25 August

Mental health issues should be prioritized

GMT 04:39 2017 Thursday ,31 August

Trump vows to right 'self-destructive' tax code

GMT 05:29 2017 Tuesday ,22 August

Celebrations across India on 71st Independence Day

GMT 10:54 2017 Wednesday ,11 October

Child obesity grows tenfold since 1975

GMT 02:31 2016 Tuesday ,06 December

Dubai Women Establishment delegation participates
Arab Today, arab today
 
 Arab Today Facebook,arab today facebook  Arab Today Twitter,arab today twitter Arab Today Rss,arab today rss  Arab Today Youtube,arab today youtube  Arab Today Youtube,arab today youtube

Maintained and developed by Arabs Today Group SAL.
All rights reserved to Arab Today Media Group 2021 ©

Maintained and developed by Arabs Today Group SAL.
All rights reserved to Arab Today Media Group 2021 ©

arabstoday arabstoday arabstoday arabstoday
arabstoday arabstoday arabstoday
arabstoday
بناية النخيل - رأس النبع _ خلف السفارة الفرنسية _بيروت - لبنان
arabstoday, Arabstoday, Arabstoday