Ballet Legend Baryshnikov Dances a Descent into Madness

A collaboration that spans time itself has finally been realized. Two of the greatest male dancers of the 20th century come together in Robert Wilson’s Letter to a Man, a one-man production in which Mikhail Baryshnikov portrays Vaslav Nijinsky's diary entries as the dancer and choreographer descended into madness. Last weekend in Madrid, and next month in Monte-Carlo, avid audiences can see the existential brutality of Nijinsky’s deterioration, depicted through intense theatricality and the one-of-a-kind movement of Baryshnikov.

Nijinsky gained worldwide fame as a dancer and choreographer in Serge Diaghiliev's iconic Ballet Russes and is still largely considered to be the best dancer of the first part of the 20th century. In the theater academy in St. Petersburg, he stood out from an early age and his teachers used to complain that he never came down from a jump in time with the music. His ballón was otherwordly: not only could he jump high, but he seemed to hang in the air for an unnerving amount of time.

Unfortunately, this was never captured on film. After graduating, he immediately started working at the Mariinsky Ballet. He was part of the generation that tried to “modernize” ballet, whose ranks included Anna Pavlova and Mikhail Fokine. All of Fokine’s early ballets, such as Les Sylphides, Petrushka (perhaps Nijinsky’s most famous role), and Le Spectre de la Rose, were created specially for Nijinsky. His own choreography later in his career was risqué, erotic, and intensely modern. His Rites of Spring, choreographed to Igor Stravinsky’s score, caused a riot on both sides of the curtain.

At the beginning of the 20th century, critic and patron Serge Diaghilev started promoting European visual art in Russia by organizing exhibitions of Impressionism and other artistic movements of the day. Diaghilev himself was no artist, but he was an impresario with the uncanny ability to put artists to work. In 1909, he took his first troupe of dancers on tour to Paris. Nijinsky was one of those dancers, and became the star of these tours. This was the beginning of the legendary Ballets Russes.

Diaghilev took to Nijinsky immediately. Despite his physical brilliance, Nijinsky was derided by some, and Diaghilev took it upon himself to educate him. He gave him books to read, took him to museums and theaters. As he had done with others, Diaghilev eventually coerced him into a romantic and sexual relationship. This experience would haunt Nijinsky far after it was over—their relationship lasted about a decade, until Diaghilev planned a tour to South America in 1916. When he was young, a gypsy had told him that he would die on water. Thus, he sent his dancers alone, afraid of setting foot on a boat. On tour, though, Nijinsky married one the corps dancers and, although it’s unclear whether it was true love or career opportunism, Romola Nijinsky spent the rest of her husband’s life caring for him. When they returned to Europe with the news of their marriage, Diaghilev was so furious he fired them both in disgrace. Diaghilev eventually did die on water, in Venice, in 1929.

In 1919, jobless and stranded in Europe after the war, Nijinsky's mental health had started to decline. Thus, he began his diary. The writing is filled with religious imagery, musings on good and evil, sexual confusion, and guilt. Always an erotic person, his relationship with Diaghilev undoubtedly did damage. As well as troubling self-reflection, the diary is filled with compulsive drawings of circles made with a compass. It is an unparalleled glance into an artist entering psychosis, with occasional rays of sanity giving light tallowing the reader in. At moments, he is lucid, then suddenly he is lost again. Soon after, Nijinsky forgot his own name and identity, and was committed to an asylum for his schizophrenia. His old dance partner Tamara Karsavina came to visit him once with an old costume. She writes in her memoirs how she thought she saw a momentary glimpse of recognition, but then he returned to an empty vessel, no longer the great Vaslav Nijinsky she had danced with.

His diary remains an intriguing work on human suffering. Henry Miller described it as “a communication so naked, so desperate, that it breaks the mold. We are face to face with reality, and it is almost unbearable…” The rest of Nijinsky’s life was spent in existential silence. He died in England in 1950, his wife by his side.

Mikhail Baryshnikov, a dancer of equal fame and legend, had also garnered fame for his charisma, stage presence, and jump. In 1974, he caused his own scandal by defecting from the Soviet Union to the United States where he continued to dance and even acted in films and television (White Nights, Sex and the City). Also from the St. Petersburg school, Baryshnikov is inarguably the greatest dancer of the second half of that century. In his first school performance, he danced a scene from Petrushka, and later on, other ballets that Fokine had made for Nijinsky became Baryshnikov’s favorites as well. Though they both came from the provinces, trained in St. Petersburg, danced at the Mariinsky, then left and never came back, the similarities end there. Nevertheless, Baryshnikov has been begged to portray Nijinsky countless times. Finally, he finally agreed to do it for Robert Wilson in Letter to a Man.

The performance is intentionally less about Nijinsky himself and more about one man’s descent. It is made up of quotes from the diary, repeated ad nauseam by voices both male and female, over a loudspeaker in English and Russian. Phrases like “I am not Christ. I am Nijinsky,” or, “I understand war because I fought with my mother-in-law,” take on mantra-like qualities that reverberate around the room and around Nijinsky’s head. Instead of attempting to imitate Nijinsky’s steps, Baryshnikov uses his own powerful stage presence to revive Nijinsky’s deteriorating sanity.

Still, the performance includes some unmistakable allusions to Nijinsky’s life. Baryshnikov is made up like a clown, a Petrushka of a different era. A tall, imposing window, meant to be an asylum cell in the play, is clearly an allusion to La Spectre de la Rose, a ballet in which Nijinsky entered and exited the stage by jumping through a large window to deafening applause. Finally, we are wished an intimate adieu from a puppet show tent also evocative of the setting in Petrushka. Baryshnikov’s Nijinsky is crazed, confused, in pain, but forever and always brilliant.

For more information on Letter to a Man, visit the director’s website. Tickets to the performance in Monte-Carlo can be bought here.

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