Video producer : Centre national de la danse. Integral video available at CND de Pantin. The amateur dancers, all driven by the same passion, are aged thirteen to eighteen. They practice both classical and contemporary dance.
Consequently, the work falls in between classical and contemporary dance and allows a form of transversality that brings the dancers together without having to worry about to which genre they belong.
Nijinsky was a Russian ballet dancer and choreographer of Polish descent. Nijinsky was one of the most gifted male dancers in history. His ability to perform seemingly gravity-defying leaps was legendary. At only 18 years old he was given a string of leads. Nijinsky met Sergei Diaghilev, a celebrated and highly innovative producer of ballet and opera as well as art exhibitions, who concentrated on promoting Russian visual and musical art particularly in Paris.
The show was a huge success. His partnership with Tamara Karsavina, also of the Mariinsky Theatre, was legendary, and they have been called the "most exemplary artists of the time". Then, Nijinsky went back to the Mariinsky Theatre, but was dismissed for appearing on-stage during a performance as Albrecht in Giselle wearing tights without the modesty trunks, obligatory for male dancers in the company. The Dowager Empress, Maria Feodorovna, complained that his appearance was obscene, and he was dismissed.
It is probable that Diaghilev arranged the scandal, in order that Nijinsky could be free to appear with his company in the west, where many of his projects now centered around him. He danced lead roles in Fokine's new productions Le Spectre de la Rose, and Igor Stravinsky's Petrouchka, in which his impersonation of a dancing but lifeless puppet was widely admired. Nijinsky took the creative reins and choreographed ballets.
