About This Show

The Hamburg Ballet, under the leadership of John Neumeier, Artistic Director and Chief Choreographer, presents Nijinsky. To show various aspects of the person and performer Nijinsky, Neumeier has chosen to have several dancers represent fragments of Nijinsky’s persona. The music is by Frédéric Chopin, Robert Schumann, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and Dmitri Shostakovich.

The critically acclaimed ballet by John Neumeier celebrates the life and legend of one of the most exceptional artists of all time. Vaslav Nijinsky, the “God of the Dance.” He set a new standard technically as well as expressively, and achieved unparalleled fame and popularity. It was as a choreographer however that Nijinsky established a new direction – a dance vision pointing the way towards modern choreography. As a choreographer, he created ballets that both mesmerized and shocked audiences. Ultimately, though, his life was one of tragedy, as his genius gave way to schizophrenia, and his world disintegrated into madness. His personal fate and mental illness forced him to spend the last 30 years of his life in various asylums. The ballet begins in a reconstruction of the “Festsaal” in the Suvretta-Haus, a hotel in St-Moritz, the room of Nijinsky’s last performance as a dancer: it is a moment of transition, a place of memory and premonition.

Show Details

Dates: Opening Night: February 20, 2004 Final Performance: February 22, 2004