Canadian ballet gives its all to wild ‘Nijinsky’
After a decade’s absence, the National Ballet of Canada, one of the continent’s top classical dance companies, is back in town, bearing somewhat rarefied gifts, as it fills in for the San Francisco Ballet, which is busy with the final preparations for its Unbound: A Festival of New Works.
The Canadians’ offering of John Neumeier’s flawed but theatrically compelling “Nijinsky” opened a week’s run Tuesday, April 3, at the War Memorial Opera House, in a commendably, often ardently dispatched production of a
piece that will probably divide audiences as much as it did when Neumeier’s Hamburg Ballet imported it to the War Memorial stage five years ago.
“Nijinsky” (2000) blends Neumeier’s lifelong immersion in the legendary dancer-choreographer of the Ballets Russes (he’s considered the world’s foremost private collector of Nijinskiana) with an immoderate proportion of speculative hysteria. Anchoring the work are the re-creations of Vaslav Nijinsky’s dancing and choreographic milestones, all of which both absorbed the 19th century’s classical style and foreshadowed the modernism that prevailed for most of the 20th century. His mind shattered, the artist survived his meteoric career for three decades. Was Nijinsky mad or a visionary?
He emerges a bit of both in Neumeier’s piece, which begins and ends in 1919 in the Swiss hotel where Nijinsky gave his final performance. The work proceeds like a dream, as members of the company float across the stage, animating episodes of his career triumphs, often in jumbled order. When the golden slave of “Scheherazade” collides with the women’s corps of “Les Sylphides,” while Rimsky-Korsakov rages in the pit, the confusion of the dreamer is evident. When Nijinsky watches his Petrushka flailing against the War Memorial proscenium, the objectification is apparent and touching.
Then, there’s the private anguish of his relationship with impresario and lover Serge Diaghilev, his impulsive marriage to Romola de Pulszky, Diaghilev’s rejection of his companion, the horror of World War I and Nijinsky’s descent into madness. Neumeier’s ambition sometimes exceeds his grasp. The unisons connoting the war (and choreographed to most of Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 11) wear you down, and the choreographer doesn’t devote much time to Nijinsky’s most remarkable achievement, “Le sacre du printemps.”
But when Neumeier invests his duets with emotional inflections, the ballet pays off. The ominous first duet with Nijinsky and Diaghilev, all jutting arms and evasions, tells us much. The final duet, as Romola carts away the broken body of her husband on a sled, offers a warmth and compassion missing earlier in the evening.
It’s not really fair to compare the Canadians’ performance with what one recalls of the Hamburgers, who are totally steeped in Neumeier’s style. Still, they’ve had five years with “Nijinsky,” and Tuesday, they were at one with the piece. The company’s star of the moment, Guillaume Côté, offered a technically brilliant, emotionally compelling protagonist, tempering flights of irrationality with wisdom. Heather Ogden’s lyrical movement style made Romola more sympathetic than history has sometimes judged her. Evan McKie was a wonderfully ominous Diaghilev. The SF Ballet Orchestra played with vigor for conductor David Briskin.