Excerpt from Dance Index, Vol. 2: March, 1943The manner in which Nijinsky's face changes from role to role is immediately striking. It is en hanced by makeup, but not created by it. In fact a friend pointed out that the only role In which one recognizes Nijinsky's civilian face is that of Petrouchka where he is most heavily made up. There is no mystery about such transformability. People don't usually realize how much any face changes in the course of a day, and how often it is unrecognizable for an instant or two. Nijinsky seems to have controlled the variability a face has. The same metamorphosis is obvious in his body. The Spectre for instance has no age or sex, the Faun is adolescent, the hero of Jeux has a body full grown and experienced. Till can be either boy or man. The Slave in Scheherazade is fat, the Spectre is thin. It does not look like the same body. One can say that in this sense there is no exhibitionism in Nijinsky's photographs. He is never showing you himself, or an interpreta tion of himself. He is never vain of what he is showing you, The audience does not see him as a professional dancer, or as a professional charmer. He disappears completely, and instead there is an imaginary being in his place. Like a classic artist, he remains 'detac - hed, unseen, unmoved, disinter ested. Looking at him, one is in an imaginary world, entire and very clear, and one's emotions are not directed at their material objects, but at their imag inary satisfactions. As he said himself, he danced with love.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.