Nijinsky in Action

This photograph of Vaslav Nijinsky is one a series taken by Druet–a self-described "amateur photographer"best known today for his dazzling images of Rodin's sculpture–at the request of the painter Jacques-Emile Blanche, in the latter's garden in Passy. The dancer is seen in midair executing one of the jumps for which he was famous and wearing the costume designed by Léon Bakst for "Danse siamoise," a solo in Les Orientales, choreographed by Michel Fokine. Three years later the angular, brutally violent steps of Nijinsky's choreography for the Stravinsky ballet The Rite of Spring would cause a riot at its Paris premiere and become, along with the 1913 Armory Show in New York, one of the birthplaces of modern art's predilection for scandal.