Chapter 12 The Ballets Russes and the Greek Dance in Paris: Nijinsky’s Faune, Fantasies of the Past, and the Dance of the Future
In: ChoreonarrativesSearch for other papers by Samuel N. Dorf in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
Purchase instant access (PDF download and unlimited online access):
Abstract
The representation of ancient Greek images seen on pottery stands out as one of the clearest sources of inspiration for Nijinsky’s 1912 Ballets Russes production of L’ Après-midi d’ un faune, and the adoption of these static poses from antiquity has been recognised as one of the ballet’s most innovative features. This paper places Nijinsky’s work within the larger discussions about ancient Greek dance and music circulating in Parisian artistic and intellectual communities and examines how these static images became narrative dance.
Theoretical writings on ancient Greek dance gained popularity among Parisian scholars through the widely read work of musicologist Maurice Emmanuel. His popular method of deriving ancient movement sequences from static images painted on vases was employed by Isadora Duncan as well as the choreographer Madame Mariquita, who trained countless dancers in erotic “Greek” dance throughout her long career; however, while Nijinsky, Duncan, Mariquita, and Emmanuel share a similar methodology for deriving their ideas of ancient dance, the resulting choreographies based on the same vase paintings are remarkably different.
This article demonstrates that Nijinsky’s Faune draws from a well of dance vocabularies put forth by scholars of antiquity and employed in the choreographed Greek fantasies of Duncan and Mariquita. Nijinsky’s statuesque Faune echoes Emmanuel’s theory of Greek poses but differs from the fluidity found in female-dominated interpretations of Greek dance. Examining Faune in relation to the academic theories of ancient dance and rhythm demonstrates how works in the repertoire of the Ballets Russes reverberated not only with musical and choreographic audiences but with a much larger historiographic project undertaken by archaeologists and scholars to narrate the Greek past.