Psychosis. Homosexuality. The impact of war. They're not topics usually associated with ballet, but in the upcoming production of Nijinsky, the Australian Ballet enters the troubled mind of history's greatest male dancer.
Vaslav Nijinsky changed the status of male dancers forever after stepping onto the stage in the early 1900s. A brilliant, instinctive performer, he became an international star over a career spanning just 10 years before being diagnosed with schizophrenia in 1919. He spent the last 30 years of his life in institutions before dying in London, aged 61, in 1950.
![Kevin Jackson as Nijinsky in The Australian Ballet's upcoming production.](/web/20160903111719im_/http://www.smh.com.au/content/dam/images/g/r/2/b/8/w/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gr1ygm.png/1472765235900.jpg)
In a rehearsal room at the Australian Ballet's Melbourne headquarters, Nijinsky's story weighs heavily on principal artist Kevin Jackson.
In choreography not seen in conventional ballet, Jackson thrusts his sinewy arms in bizarre motions, as his legs kick out at jarring angles and his hands twist weirdly. His movements are both ugly and hypnotic, set against a manic musical backdrop by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and Dmitri Shostakovich. There are no dazzling pirouettes or pas de deux, and the traditional positions of modern ballet are nowhere to be seen.
![Cristiano Martino and Leanne Stojmenov during rehearsals for Nijinsky.](/web/20160903111719im_/http://www.smh.com.au/content/dam/images/g/r/4/j/y/v/image.related.articleLeadNarrow.300x0.gr1ygm.png/1472765235900.jpg)
After a 15-year campaign, the Australian Ballet is finally bringing the work, by American choreographer John Neumeier, to local audiences. It's one of the most ambitious works the company has done. Explosive and confronting, the ballet traces Nijinsky's tragic decent into mental illness at the height of his career.
Born in Kiev in 1889, Nijinsky's sexually fluid roles divided audiences and his contemporary choreography paved the way for modern male dancers. His career was forged by his fiery relationship with famed impresario Sergei Diaghilev, founder of the groundbreaking Ballets Russes. A diary Nijinsky kept for six weeks as his psychosis deepened describes a sense of impending doom; he calls himself God and curses Diaghilev. He is deeply affected by WWI. He reportedly pushes his wife, fellow dancer Romola de Pulszky, down a flight of stairs.
Recreating Nijinsky's complex choreography and inner torment is challenging, says Jackson. "I'm still not quite there yet but even just reading his books, you realise that he was in a really dark place. This kind of contemporary dance, especially for guys, we're not used to it. In Nijinsky, we dance the whole time. We're barely off stage ... I need to get that physical strength up because it's just one section after another. Then to add the emotional side on top of that and not get totally fatigued is going to be a real balance."
The work opens with Nijinsky's final performance before an invited audience at a hotel in Switzerland in 1919. Nijinsky reportedly sat in a chair and stared blankly into the crowd for half an hour before telling the audience he would dance the war for them and launching into a violent solo routine. Shortly after, he was diagnosed with schizophrenia. Romola spent the next 30 years ferrying her husband from institution to institution.
![Cristiano Martino during rehearsals for Nijinsky.](/web/20160903111719im_/http://www.smh.com.au/content/dam/images/g/r/4/j/z/8/image.related.articleLeadNarrow.300x0.gr1ygm.png/1472765235900.jpg)
Australian Ballet artistic director David McAllister was in tears after seeing the premiere of Nijinsky in Hamburg in 2001. "I was pretty much sitting in my seat speechless at the end of the night thinking, 'God, what am I going to say to this man [Neumeier]?' because it's such an extraordinary work." It was then that McAllister floated the idea of the Australian Ballet doing the production. "Neumeier asked, 'Which of my ballets would you like to do?' and I said 'Well, I'd really like Nijinsky, and it was the big premiere and he was just like 'No'," McAllister recalls, laughing. After a long courtship, Neumeier gave McAllister the green light around 2014. "I thought maybe he wasn't interested and he said 'No, it wasn't that I wasn't interested, I just thought if you really wanted it you would have come after me a bit more aggressively'."
Nijinsky opens in Melbourne on September 7 before touring to Adelaide and Sydney. The National Ballet of Canada were the last to perform the work in 2014 and its senior ballet master, Peter Ottmann, has come over to help train the Australian company.
![Vaslav Nijinksy was a dancer like no other.](/web/20160903111719im_/http://www.smh.com.au/content/dam/images/g/r/2/b/9/x/image.related.articleLeadNarrow.300x0.gr1ygm.png/1472765235900.jpg)
"It's such a powerful statement on the time in history that he lived, but also issues that we still continue to deal with," Ottmann says. "War – we still haven't resolved that issue and it's a powerful statement on that. It's a powerful statement on mental health and relationships. Those are things everybody is touched by in life. The difficulties, the struggles, the challenges of relationships."
Nijinsky had a fractious relationship with Diaghilev, who took the young dancer as his star pupil and lover and controlled all aspects of his life. Neumeier's decision to depict the desire between Diaghilev and Nijinsky on the ballet stage is revolutionary. "It is unusual for it to be so explicit in such a dance work but handled in such a beautiful and non-sensationalist way," says McAllister.
Jackson agrees the move is significant. "I think it's extremely relevant in so many areas ... gender and sexual orientation are a huge issue."
Nijinsky did love Romola and he often wrote about his fondness for her in his diary. But his sexuality weighed heavily on their relationship. Like the rest of the world, Romola fell in love with Nijinsky's characters, but the man behind the costume was someone else.
"She's falling in love with the stage persona and she doesn't realise that offstage, Nijinsky's a relatively dull character," Jackson says of one sequence in the ballet. "Apparently at parties he just wouldn't talk, but when he came on stage, that's what people adored."
After marrying Romola, Nijinsky was shunned by Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes. The couple moved to Switzerland with their three-year-old daughter but it was here that Nijinsky's schizophrenia became apparent. The story unfolds in a non-linear way as Nijinsky's memories flood in.
Mental illness is conveyed in dance moves that are pained and expressive. "There's a lot of jagged, angular sort of movement where he's perhaps pressing his elbow into his ribs," says Australian Ballet master Steven Heathcote. "It's got this carriage of angst and pain and I suppose the fractured nature of Nijinsky's mind at times. It's so clever because the movement shows us what's inside his head. It's the same for Romola, where we get the impression of a woman who is under so much strain from trying to take her husband from institution to institution to get mental help."
Nijinsky's inner torment, and the pain it causes his family, is centre stage in the ballet. "It really shows the first crack of his mental illness," McAllister says. "You see him as this great artist, basically crumbling before your eyes. His own life is told through flashbacks and in a very sort of non-linear way through all of these things that happen to him."
The company has taken extra care to ensure its dancers are strong enough for the production. "It's a tour de force for the boys who play Nijinsky," says McAllister. "They're on stage for 90 per cent of the ballet and it's a really extraordinary, emotional journey. It is one of those ballets that really affects you." Several dancers will rotate with Jackson in the lead role, and younger artists will play Nijinsky at various stages of his life.
Heathcote says the troupe will be required to dig deep. "It requires a lot of trust to go to vulnerable places but as dancers and actors, that's our job. We have to peel back some layers and go to places that aren't comfortable. But I think that's the beauty of this piece too, that it exposes very raw feelings and emotions that anyone and everyone can have, so it's very affecting because at some level, I think everyone can identify with parts of Nijinsky's personality."
But the work isn't just about Vaslav Nijinsky. It's also about Romola de Pulszky. In one pas de deux, she metaphorically and literally pulls the infirm Nijinsky around on a sled, dragging his weight behind her. "You really feel this weight of responsibility that she has on her shoulders," Heathcote says. "You watch her and you think 'She just wants to walk away' but she won't and she can't." Romola never did leave Nijinsky, continuing to seek out treatment for her husband and publishing sanitised versions of his diaries. They also had a second daughter after he was institutionalised in 1920. "Thinking about Romola, there are thousands of people out there in Australia and in the world who are caring for mentally affected or physically disabled people or both," Heathcote says. "Unless you're there you could never know the strain. It is a very affecting work."
Ottmann says Nijinsky had a profound impact on both The National Ballet of Canada and the audience. "It was everything you'd expect," he says, calling it enriching. "It had a very powerful impact on the audiences in Toronto." Canada's The Globe and Mail called it a triumph on all fronts. "In Nijinsky, Neumeier has created a ballet for the ages," wrote critic Paula Citron.
Heathcote is confident that Nijinsky's powerful themes will translate well here. "I think Australian audiences are ready for anything so long as it's a work where they feel connected to it." And what could be more powerful than flinging open the shutters on mental illness, sexuality and the impacts of war?
Nijinsky is at Arts Centre Melbourne, September 7-17; Adelaide Festival Centre, October 14-19, and Sydney Opera House, November 11- 28. australianballet.com.au