Act One

Have you ever held a door open saying “after you” to which that person says “no, after you”?  

Although I can’t prove it, I’m almost certain that this exchange happened at such a level of ethereality that you have to suspend disbelief if you want to go any further in this article because only one of these people was alive.  

Not for long though.

(Stay with me)

After a grueling stretch of picking the bones of this long lost skeleton we know as 1913’s “Le Sacre du Printemps”, Millicent Hodson, Kenneth Archer with Robert Joffrey presented one of the most defining moments in dance history; one so far reaching that I don’t believe anyone really knew in the  beginning just how far it would go and the types of people it would reach.  I am proof.  So are 1200 people who have commented on the Joffrey “Le Sacre” video on YouTube since 2007. That’s another story.

Thank heavens they delivered.  If they did not pursue Sacre as hard as they did for all those years to find Nijinsky’s masterpiece then I would be telling a very different tale right now perhaps called What the hell was Kenneth Macmillan thinking??

So was it good? Was the 1989 Joffrey performance – aside from being historically significant, good? That’s baby talk.  

It was alarming  An 80 year lost ballet became the current-day yardstick by which we measure bad choreography.  That’s the bigtime.

But let’s talk about the young man who was deliberately left behind:  Vaslav Nijinsky.

Denied, cast off, crumbling mentally, no longer dancing, fearing his life is becoming threadbare, he suffered from the cold fact that his masterpiece was not only misunderstood, but intentionally forgotten. Slowly, he became notes left in a drawer here, a scrap there, a memory, a sketch…he was being erased.  

Each year his ghost became less until it had no voice , until there was no form, until only the vague defeated lingering presence of Nijinsky was occasionally alert in the wings of some stage or other,  certain that he would never see his work realized, or even be realized for it.

Someone is reading this thinking all that is missing  is mist floating around a fat soprano hollering Italian at us.  And one can think that, absolutely.  They would, however,  be missing the biggest piece of this undefinable salvage of dance and spirit and the mystery of human nature but, hey,  stick with the probable and I will take the  possible.  Like Jerry Lewis at a Mariinsky reception, I will still take the possible.

Now remember what Stravinsky said about being “the vessel through which le sacre passed”?  If Stravinsky’s own words hold sway on the concept of receiving something – and we are talking about a man proclaimed a genius for all time – then the logic would follow that there was, indeed, a deep spiritual event taking place that spring in the months leading up to May 29, 1913.  Of course “Spiritual Event At The Rite” doesn’t sell like “Riot…”  and well well, here we are.

But it never happened.

With the first whistle or yell or shout, there was an undoing of what should have been done and by an annoying rioting aristocracy.  However…when you examine our own human nature it is likely that these people railed against themselves and their own inability to see, hear or process what was going on.  It was a sensory overload and when we do not understand something or we are disturbed by something that feels strange we lash out.  We do not, in all cases, stretch ourselves to meet the strangeness. 

These French patrons of the arts were stuffy, entitled and living in an era where it was acceptable to be so and their money dictated the stage.  Wrong people.  Wrong era.  And there would be no stretching.   Just an effigy.

Stravinsky was flush and Nijinsky never had a chance. Imagine, to be so thickly present and  indulged the world over, draped in accolades and given the opportunity to choreograph what will be synonymous with your name,  you go all in and lose it all.  

He did something so risky with the Sacre choreography because he had the courage to stand by his artistic vision and honor the scenario.  How many artists will walk head held high all the way to a metaphorical dumpster without giving in? It’s unlikely he considered it this way because the few who have followed their artistic calling are not aware of how big that moment is.  

Nijinsky broke the ground and opened a door for everyone who couldn’t or, worse, didn’t . Then someone reached from the other side and helped him keep in open: Robert Joffrey.

Millicent Hodson, in congress with forces she may have suspected – I think she did –  brought something close to perfection to the stage .   Did she and Kenneth Archer realize the alchemy of that? Did they suspect that Nijinsky was present?  Or that he was finally free after 70 silent years to create a crown from an albatross? 

Did he feel the weight of his loss become weightless in Robert Joffrey’s triumph?   I say yes.  Nijinsky left what meant the most to him as an inheritance to a man who would soon die and leave it to what meant the most to him:  his ballet company. 

What explanation is there for a regularly changing group of dancers to exist for 34 minutes as something outside of themselves year in and year out? To even exist for 4 minutes in that unmoored and almost aggressive space would be a struggle at best.  But not for them. 

Robert Joffrey got that choreography onto the stage before he died, freeing Nijinsky.  Who waited at the door to free Robert Joffrey. And together they left. One hell of an Inheritance.