Doc Chat Forty-Six: The Remarkable Career of Bronislava Nijinska
On March 3, 2022, Doc Chatters explored collections revealing the remarkable—and understudied—life of a pioneering feminist choreographer.
Felia Doubrovska as the Bride posed behind a pyramid of female dancers, flanked by an unidentified couple in rehearsal for Les Ballets Russes de Dyagilev production, 1923
Jerome Robbins Dance Division; NYPL Digital Collections, Image ID: 1947235.
A weekly series from NYPL's Center for Research in the Humanities, Doc Chat pairs an NYPL curator or specialist and a scholar to discuss evocative digitized items from the Library's collections and brainstorm innovative ways of teaching with them. In Episode Forty-Six, NYPL curator Linda Murray and dance historian Lynn Garafola explored photographs and drawings that illuminated the life and career of the ballet dancer and choreographer Bronislava Nijinska. Garafola and Murray discussed the outsized—and understudied—impact that Nijinska had on the development of 20th century ballet choreography.
Doc Chat Episode 46: The Remarkable Career of Bronislava Nijinska from The New York Public Library on Vimeo.
A transcript of this episode is available here.
Below are some handy links to materials and sources suggested in the episode.
Episode Forty-Six: Primary Sources
Linda and Lynn examined the following items. Please contact the Jerome Robbins Dance Division at The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts for more details on accessing these items.
Costume designs for Les Noces by Natalia Goncharova. *MGZGA 1-4.
Set designs for Les Noces by Natalia Goncharova. *MGZGB 1-3.
Rehearsal for Les Noces, Monte Carlo, 1923. Photographer unknown. Call number *MGZE Les Noces (Nijinska) No. 7.
Brodovitch, Alexey. Ballet: 104 Photographs by Alexey Brodovitch with text by Edwin Denby. J. J. Augustin, 1945. Call number: *MGT.
A draft of the costume design for Les Noces by the artist Natalia Goncharova is featured in the Polonsky Exhibition of The New York Public Library's Treasures.
Episode Forty-Six: Readings and Resources
Nancy Van Norman Baer, Bronislava Nijinska: A Dancer’s Legacy (Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, 1986).
Sally Banes, Dancing Women: Female Bodies on Stage (Routledge, 1998).
Lynn Garafola and Nancy Van Norman Baer, eds., The Ballets Russes and its World (Yale University Press, 1999).
Lynn Garafola, La Nijinska, Choreographer of the Modern (Oxford University Press, 2022).
Bronislava Nijinska, Bronislava Nijinska: Early Memoirs (Duke University Press, 1992).
Anthony Parton, Goncharova: The Art and Design of Natalia Goncharova. (Antique Collector’s Club, 2010).
Jane Pritchard, ed., Diaghilev and the Golden Age of the Ballets Russes, 1909-1929 (V&A Publishing, 2011).
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