★★★★½ Neumeier’s endlessly absorbing dance-drama worships the god of dance.

Arts Centre Melbourne
September 7, 2016

A photograph of Nijinsky from 1911 shows him in costume for Michel Fokine’s Le Spectre de la Rose. His head is slightly lowered and his left arm crosses his body, bent and held high so that it just covers his chin. His right arm is lifted with elbow and wrist curving to frame his head. His garment – it has the outlines of an old-fashioned one-piece bathing suit – is covered with pieces of fabric to simulate petals and reveals the astonishingly powerful thighs that gave Nijinsky his fabled lift-off and thus his ability to apparently levitate and hang in the air. But it’s the eyes that command attention. Enhanced with dark smudges of make-up, Nijinsky’s gaze is direct and very, very inviting. Think Lauren Bacall in To Have and Have Not and you have it. There’s a world of come-hither in that look.

We have no film of Nijinsky performing, only the reports of those who saw him. Of the four works he choreographed, only one, L’après-midi d’un Faune, was notated. It’s not a huge amount to go on but no one argues...