Tuesday, June 10, 2008

Nijinsky's last jump



VASLAV NIJINSKY, the world-renowned dancer and choreographer of the Ballets Russes, suffered a nervous breakdown in 1919 and his career effectively ended. He was diagnosed with schizophrenia and taken to Switzerland by his wife. He was to spend the rest of his life in and out of psychiatric hospitals and asylums. By the late 40s his mental and physical condition had worsened and he was reduced to a robot like state as if in a living coma. In an effort to revive him, his wife, Romola, decided to try one last thing that she thought could breathe some life in him. With the consent of psychiatrist Eugene Bleuler, she brought to the asylum a dancer dressed exactly like Nijinsky was dressed when he performed his famous ballet for "L'après-midi d'un faune" (The Afternoon of a Faun). The idea was that this dancer would re-enact in front of a seated Nijinsky the exact choreography of the master to help him maybe remember. The year was 1945.

Nijinsky had danced for the last time on the evening of Jan. 19, 1919. That same afternoon he also had began writing his famous diary. His last public performance, was a disturbing solo recital, ''Marriage With God,'' at a hotel in St. Moritz, Switzerland, where he and his family had taken up wartime residence. For the next 45 days, sometimes all night, the 29-year-old Nijinsky wrote feverishly in four leather-bound school exercise books. He stopped abruptly on March 4, when his wife, Romola, and her family, took him to Zurich to see the noted psychiatrist Eugen Bleuler. The verdict: schizophrenia, a diagnostic term Bleuler had recently coined.

Fast forward, 26 years later. Nijinsky is brought into a large room of the asylum and is seated on a chair. He is wearing a suit with the jacket buttoned. Dr Bleuler, Romola and a photographer are also present. The door opens and the dancer dressed as Nijinsky dances in front of the man himself. Nijinsky stares. He turns his head. He smiles. He stares again intensely at the dancer…and then…he jumps in the air. It is a glorious jump for which Nijinsky was famous. And the camera shutter clicks. And he is captured as if floating in the air with his jacket buttoned. Immediately after, he resumes his position sitting on his chair and darkness descends once again to envelope his mind forever. But for that fleeting moment in time the power of art and his explosive talent managed to brake the confining walls of madness. Darkness was illuminated for an instance. Alas, the light flickered and was extinguished again.

This incredible moment of magic is captured on a black and white photograph which now belongs in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Nijinsky died of renal failure on April 8, 1950, in London.

Thursday, June 5, 2008

It all started with the damn firecracker



Imagine the very first meeting of the human race with beings from outer space. And let us suppose that the extraterrestrials are fluent in English. What would they discuss? In Ed Wood's sublimely bad B movie "Plan 9 from outer space", we get a taste of this first encounter of humanity with a civilisation from outer space.

In the following scene the extraterrestrial EROS who has come all the way to earth to tell us that we are stupid, has to provide some more explanations after being confronted by two humans…He goes on to explain the sinister role of the firecracker…

"…JEFF
You fiend!

EROS
I? A fiend? I am a soldier of our planet! I? A fiend? We did not come here as enemies. We came only with friendly intentions. To talk. To ask your aid.

COL. EDWARDS
Our aid?

EROS
Yes. Your aid for the whole universe. But your governments of Earth refused even to accept our existence. Even though you've seen us, heard our messages, you still refused to accept us.

COL. EDWARDS
Why is it so important that you want to contact the governments of our Earth?

EROS
Because of death. Because all you of Earth are idiots!

JEFF
Now you just hold on, Buster.

EROS
No you hold on. First was your firecracker, a harmless explosive. Then your hand grenade. They began to kill your own people a few at a time. Then the bomb, then a larger bomb. Many people are killed at one time. Then your scientists stumbled upon the atom bomb. Split the atom. Then the hydrogen bomb, where you actually explode the air itself. Now you want to bring on the destruction of the entire universe, served by our sun. The only explosion left is the solaronite."

COL. EDWARDS
Why there's no such thing.

EROS
Perhaps to you. But we've known it for centuries. Your scientists will stumble upon it as they have all the others. But the juvenile minds you possess will not comprehend its strength, until it's too late.

COL. EDWARDS
You're way above our heads.

EROS
The solaronite is a way to explode the actual particles of sunlight.

COL. EDWARDS
Why that's impossible.

EROS
Even now, your scientists are working on a way to harness the sun's rays. The rays of sunlight are minute particles. Is it so far from your imagination they cannot do as I have suggested?

COL. EDWARDS
Why a particle of sunlight can't even be seen or measured.

EROS
Can you see or measure an atom? Yet you can explode one. A ray of sunlight is made up many atoms.

JEFF
So what if we do developed this solaronite bomb? We'd be even a stronger nation than now.

EROS
Stronger. You see? You see? Your stupid minds...stupid! Stupid!!

JEFF
That's all I'm taking from you!

[JEFF LEAPS AT EROS]…


In the punch up that ensued, EROS found out that the human fist is a weapon far superior to the solaronite bomb. It was time to board on to the string pulled flying saucers and head back home. As Bela Lugosi said in another Ed Wood masterpiece: "Pull tha strink, pull tha strink".