NIJINSKI

The full-length ballet by Marco Goecke deals with the dancer and choreographer Vaslav Nijinski. It touches on significant stages of his life on and off the stage showing how closely art and madness are related.

Nijinski was one of the most extraordinary artists of the last century and made dance history with parts like the clown in Igor Stravinsky’s “Petrushka”, the Ghost of the Rose in “Le Spectre de la rose” and the Golden Slave in “Sheherazade”. It is on the strength of his pioneering choreographies, though, that he set new artistic standards. The Paris première of Nijnski’s “Le Sacre du printemps” in 1913 created what is still considered one of the greatest scandals known in the history of theatre. The undisguised eroticism of his ballet “L’Après-midi d’un faune” based on Claude Debussy caused scarcely less offence. Nijinski’s career is closely linked with the path towards madness. He was fighting schizophrenia and had to gradually withdraw from public life. Nijinksi lived through both world wars and, as patient in a psychiatric hospital, he narrowly escaped death by the NS euthanasia programme, together with his wife Romola.

Typically for Goecke, his piece moves beyond biographical aspects addressing fundamental issues. “NIJINSKI” will reflect on the magic and the value of art – and the high price it exacts from all creative minds. The team includes partners who have collaborated many times with Marco Goecke: the set and costume designer Michaela Springer, the lighting designer Udo Haberland and the dramaturge Esther Dreesen-Schaback.

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