The Many Faces of Nijinsky

Nijinsky's first memories, unspooling as he dances for his last audience, are at first triumphant ones. Les Sylphides was the ballet that introduced him to the West, kicking off his brilliant, bright-burning period as one of Paris' most fêted celebrities. His ballerina, Tamara Karsavina, is one of the many shades that flit through his troubled mind. Together, they recreate the soulful mood of Fokine's ballet - the Poet listening for his muse.

As Harlequin from the ballet Carnaval, Nijinsky is at his brightest and most crowd-pleasing, a jester leaping ever higher for the pleasure of his audience. His memories of this role and the rapturous response to it are in sharp contrast to the dark, stark dance he has just performed for the bemused audience at the Suvretta House hotel.

Just as the Spirit of the Rose enchants a dreaming young girl in Spectre de la rose, so the young Nijinsky enchants Diaghilev, the much older impresario. Androgynous and fragile, leaping into the realm of impossibility, the Spirit of the Rose, like the painfully shy young dancer, seems not quite of this world.

Paris went ga-ga for the "barbarous" exoticism of the Ballets Russes, which rose to its heights in the Oriental fantasy Schéhérazade. Nijinsky, as the Golden Slave, was taken to be as licentious as his character, and scurrilous rumours abounded about his promiscuity. In Neumeier's ballet, it is as the writhing, explosive Golden Slave that Nijinsky first catches the rapt attention of Romola, the fan that will become his wife.

Nijinsky's own ballet, Jeux, centred on the sportings of two Young Girls and a Young Man who have been playing tennis. According to Nijinsky's diaries, Diaghilev had suggested the idea, except as a homosexual trio. In Neumeier's ballet, the trio is as Diaghilev imagined it - and becomes a metaphor for the dark play of power, sexuality and favouritism in the relationship between dancer and mentor.

The Afternoon of a Faun was Nijinsky's most sensual ballet, depicting the roused desire of a mythological creature - and his masturbation and orgasm over the scarf of the nymph he has been ogling. When Romola meets Nijinsky on board the ship, he is tentative, but the Faun knows no such hesitancy and plunges into the whirlwind courtship.