He was less than average at school, only being able to concentrate on subjects he enjoyed. His head was always in dancing and he was mocked by his peers for being Polish. Due to his faintly Japanese looks(?) he also got bullied because of the ongoing Japanese war. That seems a bit harsh?
Despite being at a ballet school his peers still resented him for being such an awesome dancer. On one occasion Nijinsky was tripped by a school brat during a performance and put in a coma for four days.
In 1903 he was expelled from school for shooting people’s hats off with a catapult as he rode in a carriage to the theatre. The school didn’t want to lose such a bright spark of a dancer though, so they readmitted him after a good old-fashioned beating.
Sergei Diaghilev started a new ballet company in 1909 called Ballets Russes. Nijinski eagerly joined and soon became intimate with Diaghilev.
Nijinsky was once dismissed from the illustrious Mariinsky Theatre, for appearing on-stage during a performance as Albrecht in Giselle having “forgotten” to wear his modesty trunks. Modesty trunks helped secrete and partially obscure your bits and bobs and were obligatory for male dancers in the company. The Dowager Empress, Maria Feodorovna (mother of Nicholas II of Russia), complained that his appearance was obscene. That seems to have been the point.
Ballet was in a time of flux when Nijinski was at his height. He was bringing in a new and modern style of dance which he displayed in a series of self written ballets. At the premier of Le Sacre du Printemps (1913) fisty cuffs erupted in the audience between those who loved and those who hated this totally new style of ballet. It’s hard to imagine a modern ballet crowd having a punch up, unless the caviar was off.
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