The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts > Exhibitions

Vaslav Nijinsky: Creating a New Artistic Era

From February 12, 2003 through May 3, 2003
Donald and Mary Oenslager Gallery
The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, 40 Lincoln Center Plaza, New York, NY 10023-7498 (directions)

See related Online Exhibition.

Vaslav Nijinsky (1890-1950) was one of the 20th century's preeminent artists. The exhibition focuses on his career as a dancer and choreographer in a time marked by international disruptions of war as well as avant-garde collaborations and artistic energy. Nijinsky was a principal member of the Imperial Ballet in St. Petersburg and then became an international star through his performances with Serge Diaghilev's Ballets Russes in its seasons in Western Europe, from 1908. His celebrity and lasting fame resulted from his premiere performances in Mikhail Fokine ballets such as Petrouchka and Les Sylphides. His own choreography -- L'Après-midi d'un Faune (1913), Jeux (1913), Le Sacre du Printemps (1913), and Till Eulenspiegel (1916) -- was revolutionary in rejecting standard ballet technique for new vocabularies of movement.

The exhibition includes 250 items from the Library's dance, theater, and music holdings. Particularly revealing is Nijinsky's diary. Among other treasures, the exhibit features original costume designs by Robert Edmond Jones for Till Eulenspiegel, the score of the seminal Le Sacre du Printemps, composed by Stravinsky, with the composer's markings; and a Cubist-inspired mask drawn by Nijinsky in 1922. Performance and personal photographs from among the 2,000 held by the Library are also shown. Posters and other promotional artifacts place his performances, tours, and choreography in cultural and historical context. Video documentation of reconstructions of his L'Après-midi d'un Faune, Sacre du Printemps, and Jeux is shown in the gallery.

A series of related free public programs presented in the Library's Bruno Walter Auditorium focuses on the time in which Nijinsky worked, the influence of his work on other artists, and his many innovative collaborators, among them, Leon Bakst, Jean Cocteau, Natalia Gontcharova, Robert Edmond Jones, Ida Rubinstein, and Igor Stravinsky.

Press Release