Jordan Lian is a PhD candidate in Slavonic Studies at Clare College, University of Cambridge, writing a dissertation on the career of Bronislava Nijinska (1891-1972) in interwar Eastern Europe. Her research interests include studies of dance history, modernism and the avant-garde, and postcolonial and critical theory in the cultural histories of Eastern Europe, Eurasia, and Russia.
This research on Nijinska’s pedagogy draws on Box-Folders 33/1 and 33/2 in the Bronislava Nijinska Archive at the Library of Congress.
Bronislava Nijinska was an influential choreographer who transformed ballet modernism with her canonical works Les noces (1923) and Les biches (1924). She choreographed over seventy ballets in her lifetime and was a noteworthy participant in Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. She was also the younger sister of dancer and choreographer Vaslav Nijinsky (1889-1950), who brought to life the early Saisons Russes and choreographed the Afternoon of a Faun (1912) and Rite of Spring (1913).
This post sheds some light on the theoretical aspect of her praxis, with a particular focus on her independent studio—the Ecole de Mouvement (Shkola dvizheniia)—in Kyiv. In 1918, she returned to Kyiv from Moscow, eager to realize the aesthetic theory she had been developing. Kyiv would provide a springboard for her growing choreographic praxis, with its thriving avant-garde community becoming integral to her creative evolution.
The aims of her independent studio were closely intertwined with her desire to reunite with her brother, Vaslav—indeed, the school was intended to train dancers to understand Nijinsky’s new choreography and prepare them to dance in his company. But those endeavours were increasingly difficult to realize as German forces evacuated Kyiv and Symon Petliura (1879-1926) occupied Kyiv. Nijinska remained in Kyiv as the First World War ended, escaping in 1921.
Her son, Lev, was born on 7 January 1919 (Old style), and the Ecole de Mouvement opened exactly three weeks later, on 28 January 1919. On 21 Funduklievskaya Street, around the corner from the Kyiv City Opera, the school would become Nijinska’s means of interfacing with the city’s artistic milieu and residents. The Ecole de Mouvement was born out of the principles that Nijinska believed would reform dance pedagogy. As an artist, she documented the theory behind her establishment of a school of dance.
For her, the studio was a space where she could develop herself as a pedagogue responsible for the systematic training of refined artists, as well as a multifaceted practitioner whose intellectual capacity would open a new horizon for the success of the danced arts. She was emphatic about her vision for her contemporary school, which would depart from being a mere ballet school or consisting solely of dance class, instead becoming a true “School of Movement.”
Nijinska felt that contemporary schools should no longer be based on one form of classical dance, but instead instruct students on understanding any art that incorporated choreography. Her Ecole de Mouvement was what she called a “theatrical-balletic” institution where the curriculum emphasized intellectual learning as much as physical training. Nijinska cited her early childhood memories of observing renowned Russian and Italian opera singers as the reasoning behind the Ecole de Mouvement’s curriculum for other theatrical practitioners. For instance, the Ecole included a separate curriculum for opera and drama artists that focused on movement and the representation of national dances.
In fact, while the school’s first students may have been new to classical dance, they were well-educated graduates of the Kyiv Gymnasium dedicated to immersing themselves in art and dance. Nijinska was not seeking young dancers continuing their training in classical ballet, but rather people who would make easily moldable artists for the new age. The Ecole de Mouvement served as an outlet for Nijinska to realize her dance theory, within which pedagogical reform was a significant element.
A consistent theme in Nijinska’s theoretical writing was her belief that effective pedagogical programming would nurture dance students into true artists rather than dilletantes aimlessly moving through poses. In particular, she believed that existing dance training educated students in a myopic fashion, resulting in dancers able to execute dances, but not to actively create. As a result, in her opinion, contemporary dancers insufficiently conveyed Movement in their performance.
The Ecole’s curriculum was intended to address the hindrances preventing artists’ cultivation of true Movement by educating students on various aesthetic traditions in an attempt to enrich their worldview and cultivate “literate artists.” Nijinska believed that dancers with a multidisciplinary education would possess a deeper understanding of the various manifestations of expression and be able to imbue their dancing with Movement. The Ecole’s program was Nijinska’s attempt to develop dancers intellectually as well as physically.
The Ecole’s pedagogy fulfilled Nijinska’s vision for a dance training that included all aspects of aesthetics, priming young dancers to become multidimensional practitioners. Accordingly, Nijinska’s curriculum was nearly equally split between theoretical and physical training. Dancers would deftly move among classical dance, mime and plastique, and other genres of choreography, including theatrical styles of movement and character dance, while also acquiring a robust understanding of how dance engaged with other artistic disciplines.
To enhance the dancers’ future versatility, these artistic fundamentals were fortified by instruction in music theory, notation theory, and choreographic composition, as well as conversations on art and creativity. By cultivating her students’ sensitivities to expression and sensation, thereby attuning their transmission of Movement in dance, Nijinska sought to make her students into creative artists reaching for deeper expression rather than dancers simply recreating dance performance.
She proposed that dancers understand their artistic agency and play a more active role in choreography. The program’s emphasis on theory would empower them to interpret existing choreographic works and conceive of their own. In time, dancers would forge their own artistic agency and “co-create” with the director rather than simply repeating their movements and remaining subordinate to another’s vision. Nijinska’s pedagogical reform established the foundation for a new class of dancers who, informed by multiple aesthetic traditions, would reinvigorate the dance tradition through their artistic versatility and synoptic perspective on creativity.
The Ecole became the institution where Nijinska could use her pedagogical theory to transform a new generation of dancers. Moreover, over the course of her three years in post-revolutionary Kyiv, it was also the platform for her own transformation as a creative artist. The studio, as an educational space for students and a collaborative space for other artists, shaped her interactions with Kyiv’s communities. Through the studio’s realization of her theoretical work, she was able to engage with the city’s artistic milieu.
Notably, Oleksandra Ekster (1882-1949) frequented the Ecole de Mouvement, and her student, Vadym Meller (1884-1962), was the primary stage and costume designer for Nijinska’s studio. Those visual artists solidified the primacy of Constructivism in Nijinska’s Kyiv praxis before her emigration in 1921. At the same time, her attention to theatrical gesture and expression also promoted a rapport with representatives of the city’s theatrical vanguards, for instance Marko Tereschenko (1894-1982) and Les Kurbas (1887-1937). The Ecole de Mouvement thus served not only as a pedagogical institution, but also as the means for Nijinska to enmesh her choreographic praxis with the blossoming cultural life of post-revolutionary Kyiv.
