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Title | Dessins sur les danses de Vaslav Nijinsky
(series title) |
Materials and techniques | Process engraving and colour stencil |
Brief description | Print, fashion plate by George Barbier from Dessins sur les danses de Vaslav Nijinsky, process engraving, 1913. |
Physical description | Fashion plate with stencilled colour. |
Dimensions | - Height: 25.4cm
- Width: 20.32cm
Taken from Victoria & Albert Museum Department of Prints and Drawings and Department of Paintings Accessions 1954. London: HMSO, 1963. |
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Marks and inscriptions | 'George Barbier 1913' (Signed and dated)
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Bibliographic references | - Victoria and Albert Museum Department of Prints and Drawings and Department of Paintings Accessions 1954 . London: HMSO, 1963.
- The following excerpt is by Douglas Blair Turnbaugh, Encyclopedia Copyright © 2015, glbtq, Inc:
"One of the greatest dancers in the history of ballet, Vaslav Fomich Nijinsky almost single-handedly reasserted the primacy of male dancers in ballet after a long period of decline. A radically innovative choreographer, the full extent of whose genius is only now being recognized, he embodied the sensuality and sexual ambiguity associated with the distinctive new art of the twentieth century. Nijinsky then met his match in the dynamic, thirty-five-year-old Sergei Diaghilev and joined the ballet company Diaghilev was preparing to take to Paris in 1909, the Ballets Russes.
Nijinsky was the star attraction of their sensational success and was soon dubbed Le Dieu de la Danse. Nijinsky and Diaghilev became lovers, and Diaghilev used all his resources to create ballets designed to highlight Nijinsky's phenomenal artistry and sexual magnetism. For example, his roles as the Golden Slave in Schéhérazade (1910) and as the androgynous scent of the rose in Le Spectre de la rose (1911) displayed the dancer's talent and charisma.
Diaghilev also encouraged Nijinsky to choreograph ballets, giving him the finest dancers to work with and unprecedented amounts of rehearsal time. The four ballets that Nijinsky created, L'Après-midi d'un faune (1912), Le Sacre du printemps (1913), Jeux (1913), and Till Eulenspiegel (1916), were box-office failures but they are now considered, by virtue of their technical innovations, to be the foundation of modern dance.
Nijinsky's ballets and the roles he danced are especially notable for their exploration of sexuality. Indeed, they were as scandalous for their sexual themes as for their radical balletic experimentations. Voyeurism, sexual primitivism, bisexuality, autoeroticism, and sexual ambiguity are all features of his work."
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