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“... Nijinsky began to lose his mind in a Swiss village in 1919. He was only 29 years old, still dazzling, animal-like, an Aschenbach vision on the Lido, a young man who could jump and pause in the air: but he began to spend all night in his studio scribbling the same things over and over, the doodlings of the incrementally mad ...”

“... and the white cuffs of the men rise in swells over the theatre like a flock of white doves.’ Nijinsky was hailed by the Figaro as the ‘dieu de la danse’. Not for the last time. The year before, Nijinsky had started a relationship with Diaghilev: ‘I trembled like an aspen leaf,’ he recalled in his diary, perhaps ...”

“... up to pace the floor. Its flavour is aptly illustrated by the shocking jacket photograph of Nijinsky undergoing a catatonic seizure at the age of 37, about eight years after he wrote this text. With his necktie neatly knotted, his face shaven and his hair combed, hands curled up, the greatest dancer of his epoch – some say of any epoch – stares into ...”

“... dancer took her place. When the curtain came down on Act Three a messenger arrived to tell Thomas Nijinsky that he had a daughter. He already had two sons: Stanislav, aged four, and Vaslav, later le dieu de la danse, who was two. Bronislava Nijinska grew up to be one of the few choreographers of any period whose works are still performed all over the ...”

“... One former Diaghilev dancer, Serge Lifar, spoke of an ‘époque Noureev’ and awarded him the Nijinsky Prize. But Lubov Egorova, the octogenarian Princess Trubetskoy, who had actually danced with Nijinsky, insisted that Nureyev had something more. Nureyev’s massive success put the Russian authorities in a quandary. He ...”

“... stage cloths. There are records of how the dancers looked. Valentine Gross’s swift sketches of Nijinsky are important because they seem to say more than photographs about how he moved – Diaghilev wouldn’t let the ballets be filmed. Still photographs, on the other hand, like the one of Nijinsky as the Negro Slave from ...”

“... extreme typesetting reflects extreme states of mind: the speaker here is the great dancer Vaslav Nijinsky, depicted in 1919 as he goes mad. If you read the books in order you will also learn early on about Bidart’s early life. Raised far from privilege, and far from the world’s great libraries, in and around Bakersfield, California, Bidart nonetheless ...”

“... the costumes by Chanel, the libretto by Cocteau. But the blow of the sublime was delivered by a Nijinsky or a Karsavina – by the dancer. According to Kirstein, it was only with the advent of a choreographer so complete in his gifts as to change dance for ever, George Balanchine, that the primacy of the choreographer over the performer, of dance over the ...”

“... the Vicomte de Noailles (7), an anonymous gym instructor (8), Igor Markevitch (9), Diaghilev (10), Nijinsky (11), Maurice Gendron (12): I was the daughter of 2, an immensely rich Belgian banker, and the granddaughter of 3, who was said to be the model for 4, and was also – would you believe it? – the great-great-granddaughter of 5. She contemplated ...”

“... Maurice Zolotow’s 1977 biography of Wilder. Billy wanted to make a movie based on the life of Nijinsky. The producer he was talking to said: ‘Are you serious? You want to make a movie about a Ukrainian ballet dancer who ends up going crazy and spending thirty years in a mental hospital, thinking he’s a horse?’ Wilder replied: ‘Ah, but in our ...”

“... it included a piece about the first London visit of the Diaghilev ballet in 1911. A boy got up as Nijinsky, dressed as the faun in ‘L’Après-Midi’, dances behind a gauze, while downstage the practice pianist reminisces: Ah yes. Nijinsky. I suppose I am the only person now able to recall one of the most exciting of his ...”

“... way of saying that Duncan didn’t, couldn’t, live by halves. In many ways she was like Vaslav Nijinsky, Adam to her Eve in the sense that both left the encircled, Edenic world of classical dance – Duncan rejecting it completely, Nijinsky slipping out by way of his choreography – for a more modern and mortal way of ...”

“... Ashton’s second teacher, had been pupils of the great Enrico Cecchetti, who had taught Pavlova, Nijinsky and Karsavina, among others, and whose emphasis on épaulement (expression in the upper body) would become an Ashton trademark. Rambert was a formidable musical theorist – she had assisted Nijinsky with the complex ...”

“... the leg in the painting, that were not so much legs as hindquarters. Nureyev was often compared to Nijinsky and the comparison is apt. He was like Nijinsky but it was Nijinsky the horse. The last of my four paintings comes from the art gallery at Aberdeen, which has a particularly good ...”

“... dances, the violent bursting forth of Russian spring, and – at the centre of it all – Nijinsky, who had leaped into Cocteau’s life a few years earlier, with ‘sylph-like grace’ and the ‘endurance of a muzhik’. He was to have a miserable end, but in Cocteau’s imagination he remained ‘half-angel, half-leopard’ and Arnaud suggests that ...”