In my last post, I expressed regret that the National Ballet of Canada was bringing John Neumeier’s bio-ballet Nijinsky to San Francisco rather than Christopher Wheeldon’s The Winter’s Tale.  However, I found Nijinsky much more enjoyable than I expected.

Based on what I’d heard about the ballet, and certainly based on what I know about Vaslav Nijinsky, I went into the performance expecting it to be, in a word, weird.  Odd.  Different.  And while the ballet is certainly atypical in terms of its structure—unfolding mostly in Nijinsky’s mind as his schizophrenia takes over, summoning up moments from the course of his life in a jumble, rather than a neat linear chronology—it is still recognizable as a full-length story ballet.  The movement vocabulary is clearly rooted in the classical.  There is a narrative arc.  Let me put this another way.  Neumeier’s Nijinsky is not nearly as shocking, or as weird, as Nijinsky’s own works.

And woe to you, I imagine, if you are watching this ballet without a sturdy background in dance history.  This ballet references many others, both ballets that Nijinsky created and that he was famous for appearing in.  There aren’t many bio-ballets out there, but this one gives us an excellent example of how to quote works:  literally, or as literally as possible.  Much of Nijinsky’s oeuvre is unknown outside of photographs.  Neumeier gives us faithful replicas of costumes and flashback choreography “in the style of” Nijinsky.  It works surprisingly well, and it’s also rather fun, like playing a game of name-that-ballet within the ballet.

The cast was led by an indefatigable Guillaume Côté as Nijinsky, plowing through two 65-minute acts with extreme physicality.  There were many moments where he launched himself into the air horizontally, ending in a heap on the floor (deliberately).  In the final moments of the ballet, Côté tore about the stage and I kept thinking how exhausted he must be!  Heather Ogden played his wife, Romola, who the ballet suggests inspired his L’Après-midi d’un faun.

Of equal, if not more, importance was Evan McKie as Serge Diaghilev, Nijinsky’s boss, mentor, and lover.  Their duet together was remarkable, both tender and tortured, and nearly everyone I spoke with who saw the ballet commented on it.  Other key characters were played by a single dancer in multiple parts:  Sonia Rodriguez danced Tamara Karsavina in four different roles; Jenna Savella danced his sister Bronislava in three.  Conversely, a handful of dancers made cameos in Nijinsky’s roles.

It’s a bit complicated.

The score is a hodge-podge, pulling from Chopin, Schumann, and Shostakovich, with an extra helping of Rimsky-Korsakov.

But did I like it?  I did.  It was extremely interesting, and the entire company of the National Ballet of Canada was fully committed to the performance.

The National Ballet of Canada:  Nijinsky, A Ballet by John Neumeier
April 3, 2018, at 7:30 pm at the War Memorial Opera House