Reconstructing Nijinsky’s
genius from images has fascinated many of the historians, critics
and philosophers who interest themselves in dance’s place
in culture. Edwin Denby wrote the essay, “Notes on Nijinsky
Photographs” in 1943 about the images by Baron de Meyer and
others. It was reprinted in Lincoln Kirstein’s book Nijinsky
Dancing, which reproduced the same photographs. We are grateful
to the Estate of Edwin Denby for permission to reprint it here.
The exhibit, Vaslav Nijinsky: Creating A New Artistic Era, provides
both the essay and the images to the gallery audience and invites
all to look at Nijinsky as a dancer, choreographer and harbinger
of the modern era.
Denby Essay
L. Roosen. Photograph of Nijinsky in Schéhérazade,
Paris, 1910. Roger Pryor Dodge Collection, Jerome Robbins
Dance Division, The New York Public Library for the Performing
Arts
written by Edwin Denby for Dance Index
(March, 1943). Reprinted here as revised for later re-publication
in the Denby anthology, Dance Writings (edited by Robert
Crawford and William MacKay, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1986).
Reprinted by permission of the Estate of Edwin Denby.
Looking at the photographs of Nijinsky, one
is struck by his expressive neck. It is an unusually thick and
long neck. But its expressivity lies in its clear lift from the
trunk, like a powerful thrust. The shoulders are not square, but
slope downward; and so they leave the neck easily free, and the
eye follows their silhouette down the arms with the sense of a
line extraordinarily extended into space, as in a picture by Cézanne
or Raphael. The head therefore, at the other end of this unusual
extension, poised up in the air, gains an astonishing distinctness,
and the tilt of it, even with no muscular accentuation, becomes
of unusual interest. Nijinsky tilts his head lightly from the
topmost joint, keeping this joint mobile against the upright thrust
of the other vertebrae. He does not bend the neck back as some
contemporary ballet dancers do. Seen from the side or the rear,
the upward line of his back continues straight into the uprightness
of the neck, like the neck of a Maillol statue. But Nijinsky alters
his neck to suit a character role. The change is striking in the
Schéhérazade pictures – and Mr. (Carl) Van
Vechten, who saw him dance the part, describes him as a “head-wagging,
simian creature.” Another variation is that for Petrouchka,
where the shoulders are raised square to break the continuity
of the silhouette; to make the arms dangle as a separate entity,
and make the head independently wobbly as a puppet’s is,
on no neck to speak of. The head here does not sum up or direct
the action of the body; it seems to have only a minor, a pathetic
function. But it bobs too nonsensically to be humanly pitiful.
In the role of the Faun the shoulders are slightly lifted when
the Faun becomes dimly aware of his own emotion; but the neck
is held up firmly and candidly against the shoulder movement (which
would normally press the neck to a forward slant); and so the
silhouette is kept self-contained and the figure keeps its dignity.
Notice, too, the neck in the reclining position of the Faun. Another
poignant duplicity of emotion is expressed by the head, neck,
and shoulder line of the Jeux photographs – the neck rising
against lifted shoulders and also bent sideways against a countertilt
of the head. The hero in Jeux seems to meet pathos with human
nobility - not as the Faun does, with animal dignity.
