Dance and Costumes. Elna Matamoros

some of these images, Bronislava Nijinska –dancer and choreographer of Les Ballets Russes; sister of the famous Vaslav Nijinky– wrote years later in her memoirs how Fokine had to spend almost an hour removing the brown makeup of his arms and legs after the first shows of Une Nuit d’Egypte,⁵⁸ so he had to ask a very young Vaslav Nijinksy to perform his part in the next ballet of the night, Rêverie Romantique.⁵⁹ The choreographer himself explained this incident several times throughout his life.⁶⁰ It would certainly be too bold to show the naked body on stage and the brown unitards were the perfect solution not only to prevent some sectors of the audience from feeling insulted –in fact, and as we have already commented, part of the success of Les Ballets Russes de Diaghilev was precisely the scandal caused by the choreographies they performed– but also so that the performers, and especially the female dancers who used to wear shorter costumes, had to feel uninhibited and comfortable enough on stage to dance and express themselves with total freedom. It is unlikely that in his first performances of Cléopâtre Fokine would have managed without the dark unitard to simulate his naked body under the costume; in the photographs of the first performances of this ballet –under any of its different titles– and of other oriental type choreographies of the company, the unitard is noticed,⁶¹ particularly in the wrinkles of the elbows and the end of the fabric on wrists and ankles.⁶² In later images,⁶³ it is evident that the couple formed by Michel Fokine and his wife Vera Fokina wore similar costumes on their bare skin without using any unitard underneath; nevertheless, in the inventory of Les Ballets Russes there were, as part of the wardrobe catalogue, a list of unitards of different tones (chestnut, hazelnut, cotton or grey silk… depending on the ballet and the characters to be performed) that the dancers wore under the stage costume, not only for moral but also for practical reasons: Fokine’s ballets didn’t last an entire night and the dancers had to change their costumes and make-up quickly for the next choreography during the brief intervals of the performance, so it would have been much less practical to have to remove make-up at full speed with the scarce washing facilities that the theatres had at the time.⁶⁴

      Another ballet, also choreographed by Michel Fokine and designed by Bakst, would finally show the rotundity of the male body on stage. In Le Spectre de la rose, premiered in 1911, Vaslav Nijinsky wore a maillot in very thin silk tights dyed in pink with green spirals (simulating rose stems) painted on top, covering his upper legs. The maillot had attached silk cut-out, shaped like rose petals, made of silk of different shades between pale pink and violet, so that it seemed that some of them belonged to newly opened roses and others to almost withered flowers. Nijinsky’s arms and part of his chest would be fully exposed while bracelets built of petals adorned the upper part of his arms. A small cap on his head hid the dancer’s hair, camouflaging it under the trimmed petals.⁶⁵

      The costume worn by Nijinsky was so tight to his body that on the day of the dress rehearsal, the dressmaker Maria Stepanova had to sew the petals on the maillot the dancer was already wearing, under the watchful gaze of Bakst and Diaghilev, who were nervously waiting in the wings to start the performance.⁶⁶ Nijinksy’s characterization included careful make-up that made him look like an insect⁶⁷ by raising his eyebrows and marking his lips, which stood out on his pale skin. His androgynous appearance, his round musculature –unusual for a dancer of his time– his short limbs and the expressiveness of his hands further accentuated his extraordinary jump, which Fokine took advantage of in every second of this piece.

      Historically, this costume designed by Léon Bakst has been considered to incorporate the first fitted tights worn by a male dancer, and was an important turning point in dance costume design. The use of dyed silk for male leotards allowed the audience to truly appreciate the well-built musculature of the dancers and for them to have a freedom of movement never experienced before.

      In 1910, Alexandre Benois designed all the costumes and sets for a production of the ballet Giselle that premiered Les Ballets Russes. The costume created for Nijinsky⁶⁸ was used on stage without problems in Paris but, once back at the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg, it was certainly shameless to the eyes of its conservative Russian audience.⁶⁹ Benois would tell years later that it was Diaghilev who shortened even more the jacket of the costume of Act I, so it turned out that the culottes worn by Nijinsky under the tights were too evident; Bakst and Diaghilev decided that he should take them off, and therefore the lower part of the dancer became even more revealing. The fact that the Empress was in the audience did not help the case go unnoticed and the next day Nijinsky was dismissed from the Imperial Ballets.⁷⁰

      3.12 - Photograph of Benois’s costume design for Albrecht in Giselle, Act I, 1910.Unidentif. photogr.

      Both Bakst and Benois, with their intelligent designs, knew how to make the most of each dancer’s physique; of Nijinsky himself, of whom we know he had short stature and hyper-developed musculature in the lower half, they managed to make him seem to have “the figure of Apollo”, as Prince Lieven recalls in his book on Les Ballets Russes.⁷¹ It seems logical to think that wide jackets and fitted tights were the theatrical tools to compensate for the imbalance of his body proportions and that, unexpectedly, this outfit then caused a drastic change in what will be the male dancer’s clothing from then on. Not only the dancer would move more comfortably on stage, but he would also look more attractive to the audience.

      A few years later, Nijinksy faced his work as a choreographer encouraged by Diaghilev and it was indeed his personal sexual touch –which other choreographers had previously explored– that became his greatest merit as a creator. Nijinsky’s tights in his ballet Afternoon of a Faun⁷² uncovered his anatomy without modesty and inevitably revealed the silhouette of his genitals as performing profile positions… which were the poses mainly used in most part of the ballet.⁷³ Moreover, according to the chronicles of the time, Nijinksy/Faune used the nymph’s stolen handkerchief to, in the last scene of the ballet –when he dances on the empty stage–, lie down on it and, as part of the audience understood, reach the sexual climax.

      The next day, the Critic Gaston Calmette published a review on the first page of Le Figaro under the eloquent title “A false step” complaining of Nijinsky’s expressive excesses without reference to his daring costume, accusing him of “erotic bestiality” and impudent gestures.⁷⁴ However, other manifestations diminished significance from the scandal, highlighting its artistic virtues. The sculptor Auguste Rodin praised the qualities of the ballet, and its conjunction between the mime and the plastic in an article –also published on the front page– in the newspaper Le Matin, where he also highlighted the innovations of Loïe Fuller and Isadora Duncan:⁷⁵ the next day, Gaston Calmette scolded Rodin⁷⁶ in his response to a ‘letter to the director’ signed by Diaghilev in which he included the very favourable opinion of Odilon Redon⁷⁷ and a long fragment of the quoted article in Le Matin. Nijinksy agreed to pose for Rodin in July of the same year in appreciation for his support during the Afternoon of a Faun scandal. Curiously, in the 1980s the initial attribution of the sculpture –today at the Musée Rodin in Paris– to this choreography began to be questioned since the pose performed by Nijinsky and captured by Rodin is not part of that ballet.

      3.13 - Danseuse et Nijinsky. Collotype by Adolphe (baron) de Meyer, 1914.

      Like Rodin, other viewers did not perceive such provocation. Dancer Lydia Sokolova –who played prominent roles in Les Ballets Russes during those years– recalled in her memoirs Nijinsky’s “absolutely restrained, virile and powerful movements” in this piece, and explained: “There was an unforgettable moment just before his final amorous descent upon the scarf when he knelt on one knee on top of the hill, with his other leg stretched out behind him. Suddenly he threw back his head, opened his mouth and silently laughed. It was superb acting.”⁷⁸ Sokolova’s testimony attests the sexuality implicit in the piece, but there is not a hint of what the critique suggests. Once again, perhaps the costumes incited some to think much more than what the artist pretended… and the