Word: diaghilev
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...show too much of it here. He consistently cuts away from a dance sequence to a spectator, or shows only the dancer's face. In The Turning Point, Ross appeared determined to educate the general public in the beauties of ballet; in Nijinsky, he assumes everyone recognizes Nijinsky, Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes...
Early this century, the Ballets Russes toured Europe and performed dances that helped lay the foundation for modern ballet; a young George Ballanchine honed his craft with this troupe. Under the direction of Russian impresario Diaghilev, the Ballets Russes featured the avant-garde: music by Stravinsky and Debussy, sets by Picasso and Matisse, choreography by Fokine and Nijinsky. The film opens in 1912, with Nijinsky (George de la Pena) at the height of his distinguished dancing career, and beginning to design his own ballets, encouraged by mentor and lover Diaghilev (Alan Bates). But as Nijinsky's innovative ballets meet with...
...driven into his famous madness by a combination of overwork and heterosexuality. The former, it says, was a direct result of his consuming ambition to be a choreographer. The latter came from his involvement with Romola de Pulszky, portrayed as a rather silly society girl who joins Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes with the express purpose of seducing the dancer. After a number of rather tedious misunderstandings with the impresario (who is also his lover), Nijinsky indeed falls into her waiting arms; at that point his decline from a kind of noble and innocent moodiness to lunacy begins...
...film contains a rather guarded performance by Alan Bates as Diaghilev and an ill-considered one by Leslie Browne, the young ballerina in Director Ross's The Turning Point. She is here both glum and insipid as she pursues not an ambition but a man. A young dancer from the American Ballet Theater, George de la Pena, acts the part of Nijinsky quite effectively. There is a certain ineluctable spirit about him. But of his dancing, strangely, nothing at all can be said: Ross never permits him to per form a complete sequence of a ballet. In one instance...
...would be to no effect if Misia were just a lucky hanger-on. But as Diaghilev recognized, her taste was accurate. Her occasional criticism stung and enraged Stravinsky, who often played his music first for her. For decades she helped support the composer generously and without question. With the men she loved, she was not so wise. She had a pathetic way of attracting younger women into her circle who could be counted on to steal her man. She was as slow to see this as she was quick to spot the first signs of young genius. Roussy Mdivani...