Nijinsky
By: Lucy Moore
Publisher: Profile Books Ltd
Published: 2013
Language: eng
Number of pages: 324
ISBN-13: 9781846686184; 9781846886191
Subjects: Ballet; Ballet dancers; Biography; History
Description: The first major biography for forty years tells the tragic story of ballet's great revolutionary, Nijinsky. 'He achieves the miraculous, ' the sculptor Auguste Rodin wrote of Vaslav Nijinsky. He embodies all the beauty of classical frescoes and statues. Like so many since, Rodin recognised that in Nijinsky classical ballet had one of the greatest and most original artists of the twentieth century, in any genre. And his life is the stuff of legends: a story of great beauty and great tragedy. Immersed in the world of dance from his childhood, he found his natural home in the Imperial Theatre and the Ballets Russe, and a powerful sponsor in Sergei Diaghilev - until a dramatic and public failure ended his career and set him on a route to madness. As a dancer, he was acclaimed as godlike for his extraordinary grace and elevation, but the opening of Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring saw furious brawls between admirers of his radically unballetic choreography and horrified traditionalists. Though 2013 marks the Rite's centenary, Nijinsky's story has lost none of its power to shock, fascinate and move. Adored and reviled in his lifetime, his phenomenal talent was shadowed by schizophrenia and an intense but destructive relationship with his lover, Diaghilev. In the first biography for forty years, this book examines a career defined by two forces - inspired performance and an equally headline-grabbing talent for controversy.
Notes: Illustrated endpapers.

First published in Great Britain in 2013.

Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Machine generated contents note: ch. 1 Yaponchik 1889-1905; title: ch. 2 The Favourite Slave 1906-1909; title: ch. 3 Dieude la Danse 1909-1910; title: ch. 4 Petrushka 1910-1911; title: ch. 5 Faune and Jeux 1911-1913; title: ch. 6 Le Sacre duprintemps 1910-1913; title: ch. 7 Roses 1913-1914; title: ch. 8 Mephisto Valse 1914-1918; title: ch. 9 Spectre 1918-1950; title: Divertissement A Libretto For A Ballet Based On Nijinsky's Life; title: ch. 10 The Chosen One.