Customer Reviews

Vaslav Nijinsky: A Leap Into Madness

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More rubbish has been written about Vaslav Nijinsky than about any other dancer. Therefore it is sheer joy to read the biography by Peter Ostwald. He is a professor of psychiatry at the University of California in San Francisco and as such eminently able to analyze this severely troubled dancer. Nijinsky was born in 1890 and was enrolled as a child at the Imperial Ballet School in St. Peters burg. There he excelled in artistic subjects, but did badly in academic ones and behaved so badly that he was threatened with expulsion. As a person who was unaccustomed to sophisticated life he found it very difficult to adjust, furthermore he was by nature a rather shy and retiring young boy when he found himself patronized by people like Prince Pavel Lvov. Then followed his disastrous marriage to a Hungarian heiress and a series of unfortunate events like a fiasco in London, fracas during the first night of his ballet "Le sacre du printemps" and the outbreak of WW1. I! n those days there was not much the doctors could do for mental patients and when Nijinsky died in 1950 he had not been dancing for over thirty years. The tragic fate of this gifted dancer has been documented a number of times, but for the first time by a person who has insight in mental disorders. A handsome volume with interesting illustrations, two appendix of medical character, lavish notes and bibliograhy.

I read this book from start to finish in a couple days it was so absorbing and fascinating. My heart was moved with compassion for this 'deeply disturbed' dancer. A great biography for anyone interested in human sociology and psychology!