Sergei Rachmaninov - Symphonic Dances

Time being scarce, Fokine, apart from showing the dancers their moves and timing, left certain details for them to fill in themselves. When Bronislava was practising her Butterfly dance, it was Vaslav who invented and taught her the rapidly changing positions of the arms, now together in front, now behind the back, and the fluttering hands which, with the non-stop movement, seem to us today the essential characteristics of this role in Fokine’s famous and much-loved ballet. We can imagine the brother, putting on his coquettish face, flitting about the room and then correcting his sister. Bronia stayed up half the night perfecting in front of a looking-glass the gestures he had shown her. So what was possibly Nijinsky’s first effective essay in choreography was embedded in a work of Fokine’s, just as Leonardo’s angel is said to smile from the corner of Verocchio’s ‘Madonna’ in the National Gallery. Vaslav’s mind had perhaps already been directed by Diaghilev since the last summer into thoughts of doing choreography.

Fokine’s ballets for Diaghilev had been brilliantly varied in subject matter and atmosphere—from the folkloric Petrushka and The Firebird to the subtle salon perfume of Carnaval and the exoticism of Scheherazade—as well as offering showcases for the talents of Karsavina and Nijinsky.