Afternoon of A Faun (Nijinsky) - History

History

The ballet was developed as a possible new production for the Ballets Russes founded by Sergei Diaghilev. Most of the dances performed by the company were choreographed by Michel Fokine, who had worked as a choreographer with the Imperial Russian Ballet, from which all the different specialists for the new ballet company had come. Initially the Ballet Russes took advantage of the 3 months summer break, when the Imperial ballet closed and its staff were free to do other things, to stage ballet and opera in Paris. Diaghilev was looking around for an alternative to the style which Fokine customarily delivered and decided to allow his senior male dancer, Vaslav Nijinsky, to try his hand at choreography.

The original idea was developed by Diaghilev, Nijinsky and Bakst and was inspired by the artwork on ancient greek vases and Egyptian and Assirian frescoes which they viewed in the Louvre museum. Bakst had already worked with Vsevolod Meyerhold, an innovative theatre producer and director who had introduced concepts like two-dimensionality, stylized postures, a narrow stage, pauses and pacing to emphasise significant moments, into his productions. Such concepts apear transferred to ballet in Faun.

Jean Cocteau helped to explain the Mallarmé poem (Nijinsky spoke little French) and with developing a scenario for the ballet. The music by Debussy already existed in a fully orchestrated form. After the summer season in Paris, Nijinsky returned to St Petersburg for the new Russian season and there started to work on the choreography with the help of his sister Bronislava Nijinska who was herself a senior dancer, and who later choreographed her own ballets for Ballets Rousses. Nijinsky was much excited about the project.

Nijinsky was an exceptional dancer, but he was not an exceptional teacher. Throughout the development of all his ballets he had difficulty explaining to others what he needed them to do, and operated by demonstrating rather than explaining. He had difficulty accepting the limitations of others, expecting them to be able to perform as well as he. Bronislava acted as his guinepig, trying out dances and positions. "I am like a piece of clay that he is moulding, shaping into each pose and change of movement... Vaslav is unwilling to realize the tremendous distance separating his vision from the means that are at the disposal of the artist." His aim was to reproduce the stylised look of the ancient artworks on the stage. In his portrayal of the faun, Nijinsky managed to reproduce exactly the figure of a satyr shown on greek vases in the Louvre.

Nijinsky and his sister gave a first showing of the work so far to Diaghilev and Bakst in St. Petersburg at the start of 1911. However, its development was kept secret until Diaghilev was ready to stage it, for fear of offending Fokine. The company was relying on Fokine for other ballets in production and planned, and as matters turned out, justifiably thought he might walk out if his position as undisputed choreographer to the company was challenged. The régisseur, Grigoriev, was let into the secret in early 1912 and in March rehearsals began with other members of the company. Fokine resented the loss of rehearsal time for his own productions, attacked Nijinsky's incompetence at getting across his own ideas, claimed he only had the job because he was Diaghilev's lover and announced his intention to resign. Igor Stravinsky, whatever he thought of Nijinsky's ability, regretted that Fokine would be choreographing music he had just completed for Le Sacre du Printemps because he thought Fokine had run out of ideas.

The 12 minute ballet required 90 rehearsals, in one respect justifying Fokine's complaints. However, all the dancers suffered the same difficulties Bronislava had reported in trying to adapt to the strange new movements which felt completely unnatural, cutting across their training. By this time Nijinsky had fully devised exactly what he wanted each dancer to do, so it was at least only necessary to train them, without having to work on developing the ballet at the same time. The general view amongst the dancers was that he was mad and the ballet was doomed to failure. Even Diaghilev started to have doubts and asked Nijinsky whether there might be changes. Now Nijinsky threatened to resign.