‘Vaslav’ shines a light on dancer’s mental decline

VASLAV with Godfrey Johnson, directed by Lara Bye, Albany Cabaret Club, until Saturday IF you missed this hit cabaret last year, you can still catch it: the creative team of dancer Godfrey Johnson, director Lara Bye, writer Karen Jeynes and choreographer Fiona du Plooy are back with a second outing for Vaslav .

Dubbed “the God of the Dance” by critics in his lifetime, Russian ballet dancer Vaslav Nijinsky soared into the public’s eye more than 100 years ago at the Ballet Russe, paired with Anna Pavlova.

In a fascinating twist of timing, the main ballet programme this year included Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring ( Le Sacre du Printemps), a controversial piece for which Nijinsky was famous, shocking audiences with his vigour and sensuality.

Using music, cabaret, dance and video, the KBT Productions cabaret lets the audience under- stand Nijinsky’s comment: “People thought I was mad, I just thought I was fully alive.”

He danced as a soloist for only nine years, until he was 28, and then disintegrated into madness – but what creative madness it was.

Godfrey Johnson makes a meal of this role, showing his prowess on the piano and, although he is not a dancer, he is utterly believable as the older Nijinsky.

The star was diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic and Vaslav shows him over the next 30 years, in and out of mental institutions, heavily drugged.

One can only imagine how different his life could have been with new and better understanding and treatment of his disease.

Director Bye describes the piece as “a tragic and beautiful human story of an artist trying to find wholeness as he faces the onset of schizophrenia”.