Latvian National Ballet: Nijinski

Set and costume design: Michaela Springer
Realization stage and costumes for LNOB: Marvin Ott
Lighting design: Udo Haberland
Dramaturgy: Esther Dreesen-Schaback
Staging: Fabio Palombo

Running time: 90 minutes

Nijinski is a contemporary ballet performance by the choreographer Marco Goecke that deals with the ballet dancer and choreographer Vaslav Nijinsky. It reveals the most important moments in Nijinsky’s life on and off stage showing how closely art and madness are related.

One of the previous century’s most unconventional artists, Nijinsky intoxicated audiences with virtuoso leaps and androgynous charisma, and his revolutionary choreographies provoked scandals. The 1913 Paris premiere of The Rite of Spring caused something of a stir and continues to be one of the biggest scandals in theatre history today. A storm of similar proportions was aroused by the explicit eroticism in his ballet The Afternoon of a Faun (L'Apres-Midi d'un Faune) based on Claude Debussy's score. The artistic path of Nijinsky was closely linked to a battle with schizophrenia and a descent into madness. He spent the last thirty years of his life in mental asylums.

Marco Goecke's choreography transcends biographical aspects and addresses fundamental issues, articulating and reflecting the magic and value of art, as well as stressing the huge sacrifice it requires of all creative minds. 

Nijinski received its premiere at the Theaterhaus Stuttgart’s Gauthier Dance festival to great acclaim in 2016; since then, it has been performed on worldwide tours to great success. In 2017 Marco Goecke received the Italian prize “Danza&Danza” for Nijinski as the best choreography of the year.