National Ballet makes real-life tragedy its own
Nijinsky (out of 4) National Ballet of Canada. Choreography by John Neumeier. Until Nov. 26 at the Four Seasons Centre, 145 Queen St W. national.ballet.ca or 416-345-9595 or 1-866-345-9595
Drama thrives on human tragedy. If the subject happens to have been a real-life celebrity, rather than a fictional creation, the doleful accounting acquires particular poignancy.
Such is the case with the legendary early 20th-century ballet superstar whose mental disintegration is imaginatively depicted in John Neumeier’s Nijinsky, made for his Hamburg Ballet in 2000, acquired by the National Ballet of Canada four years ago and now, in its third local revival, wrapping up the company’s fall hometown season.
Neumeier’s two-act, self-described “choreographic approach” to a dance phenomenon is a journey into the psyche of an increasingly deranged man. There are enough direct and oblique allusions to Nijinsky’s short but brilliant career to keep ballet buffs busy identifying the references, but the sheer spectacle of this unusual portrait — Neumeier is also the designer — and the quantity of exciting dancing are sufficient to galvanize the attention of less historically well-informed audiences.
Vaslav Nijinsky, born in Kyiv in 1889, rose to international fame in the years preceding the First World War as the dazzling, gravity-defying, chameleonlike star of Russian impresario Serge Diaghilev’s Les Ballets Russes.
Diaghilev was the Svengali to Nijin- sky’s Trilby, taking the much younger man as his lover, shaping his career, promoting his choreographic ambitions — Nijinsky’s 1913 Stravinsky-scored The Rite of Spring was a watershed in the history of ballet — and then dumping Nijinsky when his protégé married the besotted aristocratic Hungarian Romola de Pulszky.
Nijinsky’s career spiralled down- ward, as did his mental condition. In January 1919, he gave his last performance before an invited audience in a St. Moritz hotel ballroom. Nijinsky was soon after diagnosed with schizophrenia and institutionalized. He died in London in 1950.
If National Ballet star Guillaume Côté in the title role looked physically and emotionally drained by the end of Wednesday’s opening — and by every appearance he was — there was ample reason.
It’s a killer, requiring an intensity of focus and physical stamina that tests the limits of even the most accomplished dancer. Côté gives it his all.
Neumeier opens the ballet with a realistic depiction of that sad last dance in St. Moritz. Nijinsky, entering like some godlike creature, is already hovering on the edge of a psy- chological abyss. When he imagines spotting Diaghilev in the audience, splendidly and sympathetically portrayed by Evan McKie, it triggers a roiling cascade of mostly discomforting recollections.
Other dancers evoke some of Nijinsky’s most famous Ballets Russes roles, notably Francesco Gabriele Frola and Naoya Ebe. Jenna Savella lends immense depth of feeling to her portrayal of Nijinsky’s sister Bronislava. Dylan Tedaldi has always been a knockout as their unhinged brother Stanislav. Tedaldi’s Act II solo is a heart-rending visualization of inner torment.
One of the toughest roles dramatically is that of Romola. She has generally not fared well with historians, being written off as a conjugally unfaithful schemer who ruined Nijinsky’s career by luring him away from Diaghilev. Neumeier favours a kinder interpretation, playing up the devoted side of Romola’s nature while not papering over her flaws. Heather Ogden succeeds in projecting the full complexity of Romola’s character.
Wisely, perhaps, Neumeier avoids a musical pastiche that matches every ballet reference with its original score. Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade predominates in Act I, Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 11 in Act II.
The latter is a gripping composition and generally an effective musical backdrop for Neumeier’s exploration of how deeply the horrors of the First World War affected Nijinsky’s fragile mental state. But it does go on a bit and the dramatic tension is stretched as a result.
Regardless, Neumeier’s Nijinsky is a substantial accomplishment both as dance and drama, and a work that the National Ballet has now made very much its own.