Bronislava Nijinska’s “Les Noces”, fourth scene, ensemble: 1966 Royal Ballet production

8; 9; 10; 11. These four photographs by Donald Southern begin to suggest the massive choral effects of Nijinska’s final scene in “Les Noces” (1923), seen here in her own revival for the Royal Ballet in 1966. Even at their most expansive, the dancers tend not to move with the amplitude that ballet is usually all about; and they move with the opposite of ballet’s lightness. Their arms are curved, bent, or crooked; their knees more often bent than straight. And yet they move their whole bodies, with power and impetus, often as if they are being moved by some larger power: the collective will.

Nijinska’s mastery of modernist geometry and machine rhythms makes this an astounding scene: it anticipates much about European and American modern dance. When Jane Dudley, the great Martha Graham dancer and teacher based in London at The London School of Contemporary Dance, saw “Les Noces”, it reminded her powerfully of Graham’s “Primitive Mysteries” (1930); she wrote about the parallel in “Dancing Times”.

Because Stravinsky’s “Noces” showed the next stage of modernism to which he had moved after “Le Sacre du printemps” (“The Rite of Spring”, 1913), people have always looked for stylistic connections and generational differences between Nijinska’s ballet and her brother Vaslav’s lost choreography for “Le Sacre”. But some of us have noticed in recent years that there are far more concrete antecedents for “Noces” in Mikhail Fokine’s choreography for “The Firebird” (1910).

The 1966 Royal Ballet production happened at the invitation of Frederick Ashton to Nijinska; she had come in 1964 to stage her other and drastically different classic, “Les Biches” (1924). The two stagings did a vast amount to reconstitute her reputation as a great choreography, just when the Royal Ballet reached the zenith of its international influence and popularity in the second half of the 1960s. Much of Ashton’s dance style derives from and connects to Nijinska’s: notably the intense bending from the waist and the drastic épaulement (as in “Biches”) from deep in the torso. It has been standard to say that Nijinska was an ugly woman (see Lynn Garafola’s “Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes”), but Ashton recalled in 1984 how beautiful he had found her when he danced for her in Les Ballets Ida Rubinstein in the late 1920s: he loved the planes of her cheeks and her vast, angelic blue eyes. Apprenticing himself to her by attending all her rehearsals, he steeped himself in every aspect of her work. Recalling this in the 1960s, she said to him “Tu es mon fils” (“You are my son”), at a time when he and George Balanchine were the two dominant choreographers of ballet worldwide.

Wednesday 3 February

8: Ensemble, final scene of “Les Noces”, Royal Ballet production. Photo: Donald Southern

9: Georgina Parkinson as Chief Bridesmaid in Bronislava Nijinska’s “Les Noces” with ensemble, final scene. Photo: Donald Southern.

10: Ensemble, final scene of “Les Noces”, Royal Ballet 1966 production. Svetlana Beriosova and Robert Mead in the Bride’s and Bridegroom’s little dance on the raised stage at the back. Photo: Donald Southern.

11: Ensemble, final scene of “Les Noces”, royal ballet 1966 production. On the raised stage at the back, the doors have opened to show the prepared bed with piled pillows: part of Natalia Gontcharova’s set. Photo: Donald Southern.