The Journal as a Testimony of the Indo-Hippie Era of the 1960s

The journal stands as an emblematic testimony of the Indo-hippie era of the 1960s, a spiritual and artistic renaissance that inspired many ballets from the choreographer (Messe pour le temps présent, Bhakti, Les Vainqueurs).

A selection of this journal was published by Maurice Béjart in the second volume of his memoirs (La Vie de Qui?, Flammarion, 1996).

In 1969, Béjart took daily notes in a planner published in memory of Mahatma Gandhi. Fascinated by Hindu mysticism following a trip to India in 1967, he filled this spiritual journal with numerous mantras and prayers ("Krishna guide my chariot, the light is at the end of the path. OM"; "The Buddha is present everywhere"; "Let God enter, but how to open the door?") and invoked both Hindu deities and the Bodhisattvas Mañjuśrī and Tārā—calming figures of the Buddhist pantheon. Béjart's "Indian period" was particularly rich in choreographic masterpieces, the progress of which can be followed in his journal (Baudelaire at the start of the year, the creation of Les Vainqueurs in Brussels and Les Quatre fils Aymon in Avignon, as well as the filming and screening of his Indian ballet Bhakti). At the crossroads of New Age and the hippie movement, Béjart’s “conversion” is symptomatic of an era rejecting progress and thirsty for spirituality: "Calcutta is not India, but our Western face. It is not religion or traditional thought that is guilty, but capitalism. India was a rich country before colonization." The Beatles’ visit to the Maharishi's ashram and Ravi Shankar's concert at Woodstock in 1969 marked the beginning of a true Western passion for Indian music and culture, which played a determining role in Béjart's ballets during that period.

India also revealed itself to Béjart as a place where art and ancient traditions had not succumbed to the perversions of positivism. He sought in his creations to express the spirit of a culture that intimately unites body and mind, where dance plays a major cosmic and spiritual role.

The Indian dance systems and Vedic chants, discovered through the Orientalist Alain Daniélou, were incorporated into his ballets—in 1968, he opened Messe du temps présent with a long solo of vînâ lasting fifteen minutes: "Béjart is in his fifteen-minute Hindu moment. And over there, Hindu moments can last hours..." commented Jean Vilar, director of the Avignon Festival. An Indian fashion also swept through the costumes of the Ballet du XXe Siècle troupe: wide silk pants, tunics, jewelry, and Oriental eyes. In his journal, Béjart stated that "there is no truth without yoga," an art he discovered with an Indian master, which appears in many of his ballets as barre exercises. He also decided to make Bhakti "an act of faith" by filming the choreography himself and spent the summer preparing Les Vainqueurs, an unusual meeting between Wagner and traditional Indian ragas.

Beyond the prolific artist, the journal also reveals the troubled personality of the choreographer, plagued by doubt and melancholy: "vague state of physical weightlessness and moral emptiness. Lethargy or laziness. Weakness. Dizziness. Torpor. Unconsciousness." Despite his successes, Béjart sought to ease his fragile state through meditation and the teachings of Indian prophets and Brahmins, who appear throughout the journal (Ramana Maharshi, Swami Ramdas, the Dalai Lama, Apollonius of Tyana). His sometimes troubled love life with his favorite dancer Jorge Donn consumed him and plunged him into anxiety—on the eve of the premiere of Les Vainqueurs, he wrote: "Pre-general. Chaos. [Jorge] Donn left. Tara absent. Me lost."

Torn between pleasure and self-control, he traveled at a frantic pace with his troupe, first in the Netherlands, then in Italy—Milan, Turin, and Venice: "I leave Venice completely enslaved to laziness, sex, and ease, yet strangely well-being of the brute who has drunk and loved." However, these happy moments did not satisfy Béjart, for whom "Joy has an aftertaste of death," despite the "life of work and discipline" he imposed on himself during this year rich in creations. At the end of his life, Béjart would look back with humor on his Indian escapades and the resolutely dark tone of his journal: "I can't help but laugh at this fool who cries and whines, while he was creating ballets in large numbers... When I think that at the end of this 1969 journal, I was resolutely thinking of retirement!"

Precious notebook of notes written by Maurice Béjart for his show in tribute to dancer Nijinsky, titled Nijinsky: Clown of God. It carries an autograph dedication to the interpreter of Nijinsky, Jorge Donn, the famous principal dancer of the Ballet du XXe Siècle and Béjart's lover.

In 1971, Maurice Béjart created Clown of God, a ballet dedicated to Vaslav Nijinski, the genius of dance and choreography who had a ten-year brilliant career with the Ballets Russes under Diaghilev before falling into madness. In this manuscript, a true logbook and choreographic score of the ballet, Béjart meticulously details the sequences of the work, the dances, and the musical excerpts by Tchaikovsky and Pierre Henry that accompany them. The notebook also serves as a collection of his numerous questions about the choice of music, dance steps, and his influences ("I don’t know why it’s always Petrouchka that I think of the most"). Béjart dedicates many pages to the profound meaning he intends to give to each scene, reflecting on Nijinski's complex and brilliant personality. On the back of the cover, there is the autograph dedication "to J.D."—Jorge Donn, his favorite dancer and lover, to whom he entrusted the title role of Nijinski in Clown of God.

By creating this ballet, Maurice Béjart hoped to contribute to the renown of Nijinski, a sacred figure of dance whose choreographic talents had been neglected. In the notebook, Béjart expresses his desire to pay tribute to Nijinski’s modernity: "especially to completely abandon classical dance. Always think of Nijinsky in Le Sacre du Printemps." Clown of God evokes the hallucinatory mystical quest that Nijinski undertook after his divorce from Serge Diaghilev—his choreographer-Pygmalion, who worked Nijinski's inexhaustible natural gift to the point of madness. In the notebook, the character of Diaghilev is described as "GOD – THE FATHER – DIAGHILEV – THE DEVIL," represented by a monumental mannequin with a menacing appearance.

Faithful to his ambition to create a total spectacle, Béjart incorporated excerpts from Nijinski's own journal, written during the winter of 1918-1919, when his mental state began to deteriorate severely. These excerpts, which are found throughout Béjart’s notebook, are recited over Tchaikovsky's Pathétique Symphony and Pierre Henry's concrete music. Béjart carefully copies the passages from the journal, incoherent mixtures of autobiographical details and reflections on existence: "No more atrocities! I want paradise on earth, I, a man in whom God has incarnated." At one point, Béjart questions: (but was he crazy? I don’t believe so).

The choreographer also made Clown of God a famous historical retrospective, allowing the audience to discover some of the great moments of the Ballets Russes era. He included four of Nijinski’s most successful and famous performances: Spectre de la rose, Shéhérezade, Petrouchka, and Le Faune, each embodied by a different dancer who haunts the hero. These are frequently mentioned in Béjart's notebook: "the body of Petrouchka, the smile of the Spectre, Heavy as the faun, light and elastic as the black man in Shéhérazade." The Ballets Russes are represented on stage by a circus under the authority of Diaghilev, performed by "5 clowns," while a female figure—the wife of Nijinski, the "nymph, sultana, doll, and romantic dancer"—reminds the dancer of happier moments in his life.

The ballet became one of Béjart's great successes after his Messe pour le temps présent created four years earlier at the Avignon Festival. For the centenary of Nijinski’s birth in 1989, Béjart created a new version of Clown of God in Milan, limited to his two favorite dancers, marking his final tribute to the dancer and genius choreographer.