A half century since his death, Vaslav Nijinsky is still the world’s most celebrated male ballet dancer.
He last performed before an audience in 1919 (he died April 8, 1950), yet his legend persists, maintained by works of art that, unlike the flickering film clips of Anna Pavlova, do little to convey the essence of dance-movement.
Nijinsky specialist Daniel Gesmer has written that the star of Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes “has inspired more literary and artistic interpretations than any other dancer in history.” Most of them date from the decade of his first fame, after graduation from the Imperial Ballet School in St. Petersburg (1907) and before the onset of mental illness. Many are little more than souvenirs, visual recollections.
However, the best not only document a great subject but achieve aesthetic distinction of their own.
Here, in a number of different media, are some of the heightened responses in visual art that have kept Nijinsky’s spirit alive:
