The name Nijinsky has long been a magic one in dance.
That`s especially true for the Joffrey Ballet, where the works of the famed Russian-born dancer-choreographer have found an almost reverential modern home.
The quirky, haunting, sexually tinged styling of ”L`Apres-Midi d`un Faune” is a cornerstone of the company`s standard repertoire, and a few seasons back, the Joffrey unveiled ”Le Sacre du Printemps,” the sensational, and for many years considered lost, tribal celebration of Stravinsky`s score.
This year, the Joffrey, which plays Tuesday through March 18 at the Auditorium Theatre, will be bringing a related but decidedly different treat. The 1923 ”Les Noces,” also set to Stravinsky, was created not by the famous Russian male, but by his sister, Bronislava Nijinska, a work clearly influenced by her sibling but very much her own as well.
The Joffrey will feature the new revival (restaged last summer by Nijinska`s daughter, Irina, and the Oakland Ballet`s Howard Sayette) on a program with its two Nijinsky pieces-the first time the works have been seen together in Chicago. ”It was a genius family,” says Gerald Arpino, the Joffrey`s artistic director. ”I recently saw an exhibit of her costumes and designs in San Francisco, and her masterful talent was really something to behold. To watch it is to realize how avant-garde both brother and sister were, how they so radically broke with the rigid balletic forms set down by Fokine and other choreographers.”
”Les Noces” was a collaborative work with Stravinsky and artist Nathalie Gontcharova (sets and costumes) for Diaghilev`s Ballet Russes. It depicts a Russian peasant wedding ceremony in early Christian times-in keeping with the art of her brother, Nijinska clearly goes for the psyche by means of neo-primitive ritual. ”She is definitely the more architectural,” says Arpino. ”But their mutual influence is fascinating as well, in everything from the use of the torso and the contortion of the hand to, of course, their taste in music.”
Reconstructing ”Les Noces,” a work that has inspired other choreographers before and after Nijinska, including Jerome Robbins, was nothing like the mammoth, somewhat controversial undertaking that went into Nijinsky`s ”Le Sacre.”
”`Le Sacre` was probably the most challenging thing our company`s ever attempted,” says Arpino. ”Les Noces” was never in any sense lost-there were ample revivals of the piece during the choreographer`s lifetime (she died in 1972), including a celebrated one in the late `60s by the Royal Ballet.
That the Joffrey had the aid of her daughter helped immensely. ”Irina was wonderful. I told her every day in California, `They`re both up there, overlooking every movement. We have to do our best,”` Arpino says.
The Joffrey`s return to the Auditorium comes after six seasons at the Civic Opera House and the switch was abrupt-the Civic`s decision not to host the troupe again this year and the last-minute scheduling into the Auditorium took place in a hurried time last fall. One casualty is that Arpino`s own celebrated major new work, ”Two-A-Day,” will have to wait for a return visit-the ballet`s costs and scenery couldn`t be accommodated at this time by the Auditorium, which is undergoing renovation for the upcoming ”The Phantom of the Opera.”
Arpino is circumspect about the switch, echoing familiar national reverence for the Auditorium as one of the more hospitable dance concert halls in the country, ”It`s very much like watching the genius of Nijinsky and Nijinska. When you look at the Auditorium, you see the genius of Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright. It`s just impossible to verbalize.”
There is another new work this year in the form of ”Lacrymosa,” by 21-year-old dancer Edward Stierle, an elegy set to parts of Mozart`s
”Requiem,” and dedicated to the late Robert Joffrey, Arpino`s longtime partner, who died during the Joffrey`s engagement here in 1988. Stierle (”our very gifted new voice”) originally created the piece for the Joffrey II. The lead male solo in the work was a piece Joffrey himself selected for a gold medal in judging a ballet competition in Charleston, S.C.
Arpino has been at the helm for two years, and he sees the future as something of a hyrbid between his own independent ideas and the vision he and Joffrey, as cofounders, shared for so many years. ”We were two Americans, and I still see that as a major part of the Joffrey point of view. It`s different than a ballet company envisioned by someone from Russia or Denmark or England. When I think of revivals, when I think of new works and new choreographers we need to encourage, I think of my college friends, of lawyers, doctors, the people in our audience.
”How can I enrich the future for my American friends?”
