Cahier de notes manuscrites pour le spectacle "Nijinski : clown de dieu"

Handwritten manuscript notebook for the performance Nijinski: Clown de Dieu
Handwritten manuscript from the choreographer Maurice Béjart.

47 pages written in black marker and blue pen, with a drawing in pencil and black marker.
Precious notebook comprising notes written by Maurice Béjart for his show, a tribute to dancer Nijinsky, entitled, “Nijinski: clown de dieu.” It has a handwritten dedication to Nijinsky's interpreter, Jorge Donn, the famous star dancer of the Ballet du XXe Siècle and Maurice Béjart's lover.
In 1971, Maurice Béjart created the “Clown de Dieu,” a ballet dedicated to Vaslav Nijinsky, a dance and choreography genius who had ten years of shinning career within Diaghilev's Ballet Russes before he turned permanently mad. In this manuscript notebook, a true logbook and choreographic score of the ballet, Béjart details, with extreme precision, the work's sequences, the dances and Tchaikovsky and Pierre Henry's musical extracts. The notebook also serves as a collection of his many questions surrounding the choice of music, the dance steps, as well as his influences (“I don't know why it's always Petrouchka that I think of the most”). Béjart dedicates several pages to the deep meaning that he intends to give to each scene, dwelling on Nijinsky's complex and bright personality. On the back of the cover, we can see a handwritten dedication “to J.D,” Jorge Donn, his favorite dancer and lover, to whom he entrusted the lead-role of Nijinsky in the Clown de Dieu.
In creating this ballet, Maurice Béjart hoped to contribute to Nijinsky's legacy, a sacred dance figure whose talent for choreography had been forgotten. In the notebook he confesses his desire to pay tribute to Nijinsky's modernity: “especially to completely abandon classical dance. Constantly thinking of Nijinsky in Sacre du Printemps”. The Clown de Dieu evokes Nijinsky's hallucinatory mystical quest after his divorce from Sergei Diaghilev – the Pygmalion-choreographer worked the dancer's inexhaustible natural gift to the point of unreason. In the notebook, the character Diaghilev is described as “god – the father – diaghilev – the devil,” and is represented by an enormous mannequin with a threatening look.
Faithful to his ambition of creating a full performance, Béjart uses extracts from Nijinsky's own diary, written during the 1918-1919 winter when his mental state is starting to go seriously downhill. These extracts, of which we find several examples in Béjart's notebook, are recited over Tchaikovsky's Symphonie Pathétique and over Pierre Henry's tangible music. Béjart carefully copies the diary extracts, their incoherent mix of autobiographical details and reflections on existence: “No more atrocities! I want paradise on earth, me, a man in whom God is incarnate. During the course of one sentence, Béjart wonders: (but was he insane? I don't think so).”
With the Clown de Dieu, the choreographer also produces a famous historical retrospective and allows the audience to discover some of the great moments of the era of Diaghilev's Russian ballets. He includes four of the Nijinsky's most successful and well-known performances in the show: “Le Spectre de la rose”, “Shéhérazade”, “Petrouchka” and “Le Faune”, each one performed by a different dancer who comes to haunt the hero. These are mentioned several times in the choreographer's notebook: “Petrouchka's body, Spectre's smile, heavy like the faune, light and elastic like the negro of Shéhérazade.” The Ballets Russes are represented on the stage by a circus under the high authority of Diaghilev, performed by “5 clowns,” while a female figure – Nijinsky's wife, the “nymphe, sultana, romantic doll and dancer,” is a reminder of the happy times in the dancer's 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. On the centenary of Nijinsky's birth in 1989, Béjart created a new version of “Clown de Dieu” in Milan, limited to his two favourite dancers, marking his ultimate tribute to the genius dancer and choreographer.
An extremely rare document retracing the creation of the Maurice Béjart's masterpieces, Nijinski: Clown de Dieu.
Provenance: Maurice Béjart's personal archives.