Optus Playhouse, Qld Performing Arts Centre, August 26
The Australian premiere of Hamburg Ballet’s signature work, Nijinsky, was keenly anticipated particularly because its creator, artistic director John Neumeier (who also designed the set, costumes and lighting), is such an authority on Nijinsky, Since the ballet’s world premiere in 2000, it has polarised critical opinion between those who love it, and those who find it overblown and inaccessible.
Nijinsky is a densely layered, complex work replete with symbolic detail that is impossible to unpack completely in one viewing. It is not a linear narrative, but rather a series of sweeping, unfolding episodes that explore the dancer’s life in flashbacks. It is therefore easier to forgo reasoning and allow yourself instead to be drawn by the colour, sound and extraordinary movement in this powerful, expressionist work.
Nijinsky opens with the dancer’s final 1919 recital at the swank St Moritz hotel, Suvretta-House – conveyed by a dazzling white set with crystal chandelier – before his 30-year confinement to mental institutions for the treatment of schizophrenia. Chopin’s Prelude No. 20, played live on stage by Richard Hoynes as the audience enteres the theatre, now accompanies the chattering guests, chicly elegant in dark velvets, turbans and tails.
Nijinsky’s wife, Romola, (the luminous Anna Polikarpova in vibrant red velvet), also arrives and waits nervously on the sideline for Nijinsky (Alexandre Riabko), who finally, with dignified aplomb, makes his entrance and slowly begins to dance.
His strangely spasmodic and insular movement draws scant applause from the guests, but a return to a more conventional style brings greater appreciation until, with a fluid dissolving of the set, we are taken back (in the mind of Nijinsky) to the world of Les Ballets Russes and of Nijinsky the dancer.
Neumeier creates an impression of the spirit of those glorious first years of Les Ballets Russes in Paris with an absolute explosion of movement and Bakst-inspired colour. Among the corps de ballet, in Degas-like tutus and Scheherazade costumes, we see Nijinsky in his role as Harlequin, as the Spirit of the Rose (Le Spectre de la Rose), as the Young Man in Jeux, as the Faun (L’Apres-Midi d’un Faune), and as the Golden Slave from Scheherazade. Performed by different dancers, each role appears to represent a different aspect of Nijinsky’s character, with Otto Bubenicek impressive as the luscious and quite feminine Golden Slave.
The tall and blond Ivan Urban suggests rather than impersonates the great impresario Serge Diaghilev as he seduces the young Nijinsky; the love affair between the two evoked in a mesmerising duet of folding and unfolding movement in a continuum that wraps one body around the other.
However, the work really takes flight with the marriage of Nijinsky to Romola. Their scene on the deck of an ocean liner, minimally evoked by a short strip of railing and a deck chair set in a wash of blue, is exquisitely drawn in a love duet, with the Faun (also Bubenicek), representing perhaps the erotic in Nijinsky, as observer and interloper.
The character of Romola Nijinsky has been sympathetically drawn by Neumeier (she was often cast as the villain of the Diaghilev/Nijinsky affair) and you see conveyed by the willowy, elegant and very blonde Polikarpova as Romola, a passion, love and finally compassion as her husband descends into insanity.
Riabko gives a tour de force performance as Nijinsky. On stage for almost the entire evening, his many solos and duets show incredible stamina and an astonishing command of a technique that is fluid, controlled and finely nuanced. His commitment to the role is absolute as he takes the audience on Nijinsky’s journey of love, passion for his art, betrayal, and final tragedy.
The second act, to the entire Shostakovich Symphony No. 11, is dark, with a parallel drawn between the beginning of World War I and Nijinsky’s descent into madness. Large (neon lit) circles, an obsession of Nijinsky’s drawings, rise and fall, while movement motifs associated with particular roles are repeated often as signifiers.
The war years erupt with a 20-plus corps of men in figure-hugging boxer shorts, khaki shirts the only signifier of them as soldiers, flying across the stage in powerful unison. In one of the most poignant moments of the ballet the character of Petrushka (Lloyd Riggins) emerges from their midst, his tortured soul a metaphor for that of Nijinsky, and perhaps also for the tragedy of war.
The movement vocabulary in Nijinsky defies classification of style, but is rather an inspiring and fluid combination of the overtly classical (beaten and turned out) with the contemporary aesthetic of parallel, grounded, and percussive movement, while a dominant use of the arms punctuates and further enhances meaning.
Nijinsky is a work of great magnitude and the dancers’ commitment to it is total, galvanising the audience not only with their magnificent dancing but also with their complete absorption in the drama. The work is worth seeing many times to more fully appreciate its complexity and richness.
Nevertheless after one performance you are still left remembering snatches of brilliant dancing, fragments of emotion, of colour and of movement from what was a glorious assault on the senses. It stays with you for days.
– DENISE RICHARDSON
The Hamburg Ballet continues its Brisbane season with 'A Midsummer Night’s Dream' from August 30 to September 5.
Photo: The Hamburg Ballet's Otto Bubenicek as Nijinsky and Anna Polikarpova as Romola