Foundations IV

Two New Characters

The fourth in a series of articles tracing the historic convergence of people and ideas that culminated in the cataclysmic 1913 premiere of Le Sacre du Printemps, and exploring the impact of that revolution today.

Previous Installments:
I. "Two Characters in the Cast: Serge Diaghilev and Igor Stravinsky"
II. "Enter Emile Jaques-Dalcroze"
III. "Two Trends"

Last time, we discussed two trends at work in early 20th-century Europe. Both factors -- interest in movement and fusion in the arts – led dance to begin merging with “concert” music. And so two new characters enter our story, both dancers: Vaslav Nijinksy and Marie Rambert. We'll discuss them in further detail later, but here's a short introduction.

Vaslav Nijinksy
   (...who transcended reality in more ways than one)

Accounts of the life of Vaslav Nijinksy vary in certain regards. His experiences touched on topics that weren’t easily discussed, although they are treated quite frankly in many sources. His wife Romola had an interest in protecting his legacy and seems to have “revised” some aspects of her husband's history. His performances thrilled many audiences, but it seems relatively few people really knew the man closely.

Vaslav Nijinksy was born in Kiev in 1889 or 1890 of Polish dancers. In 1900, he began studying dance at the Imperial Ballet School (later the Mariinsky Ballet). He had natural talent and developed a superb physique along with virtuosic ballet technique. Diaghilev selected him as a protégé, and brought him to Paris in 1909 to perform as a soloist.

By all accounts, Nijinsky was a phenomenal dancer. His elevation in leaps was often noted – so astonishing it seemed to defy gravity. For example, the ballet Le Spectre de la Rose portrays a young woman returning from a ball, enthralled with a new romance, and cherishing a rose as a souvenir and symbol of the evening. She falls asleep in her chair, and the spirit of the rose (Nijinksky) enters by leaping through her window. The preparation for this leap happens out of view of the audience, and it’s been said that Nijinsky's execution was so phenomenal that there were suspicions of backstage trickery! It didn’t seem possible that he could achieve such height without some cheating, yet his elevation onstage was lauded as extraordinary, as well.

There’s no doubt today that Diaghilev chose Nijinksky as a lover as well as a dancer. Diaghilev’s homosexuality was no secret, and from some descriptions it appears he may have been misogynist, as well (insisting all great geniuses were homosexual or bi-sexual, and favoring female dancers with boyish bodies – lest you think Balanchine was the first one!)

Some color the affair as an inequitable use of power to which Nijinsky succumbed; others describe an extremely close friendship, but imply that Nijinsky surely resisted any sexual overtures from Diaghilev. From most accounts, it's clear there was a physical relationship, although emotional and psychological dynamics involving age, power, money, and social mores are more difficult to ascertain.

Diaghilev biographer Arnold Haskell is one who wrote of their relationship in relatively frank terms, portraying Diaghilev as a mentor and teacher of the young Nijinsky. Among his words:

Diaghileff did not seduce him – Satan-like, taking him on to some lofty mountain and promising the world in return for his mind and body. That is the picture that so many would like to see, and it is dramatically obvious – Nijinsky’s Trilby to Diaghileff’s Svengali – but it is a definite contradiction of the characters of both the men.¹
 

Marie Rambert
   (...who went by many names)

When I first began tracing this story as an undergraduate student (decades ago!), I kept encountering Miriam Romberg and Marie Rambert. As I wrote research notes on these two people, I became suspicious that they were, in fact, the same person with anglicized variants of the name. I've since learned that the woman had quite a range of names – Cyvia and Cesia Rambam and Rambach, Myriam or Miriam and Romberg or Ramberg, and finally, Marie Rambert by 1915. Her father and uncles changed the family name for “political reasons." 

She was Jewish, born in 1888 in Warsaw. As a young woman, Marie (to use her best-known name) became politically active against the Russian domination of Poland. Her parents, fearing for their daughter's safety, sent her to Paris to study medicine. (Isn't it interesting how the majority of the people in this story were 'sent' to major cities, by their parents, to study subjects like law, or medicine?)

She’d studied a little ballet and social dance, but when she attended Isadora Duncan’s 1904 performance in Warsaw, she was thoroughly enthralled. She attended Jaques-Dalcroze’s two-week summer course in Geneva in 1909, and ended up staying with him for several years – as a student, teacher, and friend.

She was a very talented student, and appreciated learning new skills in both movement and music. The knowledge she gained in music literacy, as well as the music/movement connection, contributed greatly to her later career in ballet.

Legacy has it that Jaques-Dalcroze and Rambert had a bit of a conflict over music and dance. Rambert saw the inherent music in movement, and believed in the concept of silent music in movement -- the notion of a dance as a silent art form, with movement itself expressing rhythm, phrasing, nuance, etc. apart from sound. Jaques-Dalcroze disagreed.

Rambert was also reputed to be somewhat difficult, at least toward students, and at least in her later life. Obstinacy in later life was attributed to Jaques-Dalcroze, as well. But she was always a determined, hard worker, and she and Jaques-Dalcroze were “great friends, often seen in each other’s company laughing uproariously.”²

And when Jaques-Dalcroze began his Institute at Hellerau, Rambert went with him, as a teacher of movement.

More next time!
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1. Arnold L. Haskell, Diaghileff: His Artistic and Private Life (NY: Da Capo Press, reprint edition, 1978) p.230

2. Irwin Spector, Rhythm and Life: The Work of Emile Jaques-Dalcroze (Stuyvesant, NY: Pendragon Press, 1990), p. 161.