Robert Wilson – Mikhail Baryshnikov

Letter to a Man
Based on Nijinsky’s diaries

Celebrated artists Robert Wilson and Mikhail Baryshnikov join forces to step inside the shattered mind of one of the greatest dancers in history, Vaslav Nijinsky. Based on the iconic dancer’s diaries, a bona fide work of art which chronicles his descent into madness, this solo piece tackles the artist’s tormented sexuality and spirituality, as well as his tempestuous relationship with Sergei Diaghilev, the founder of Ballets Russes, to whom the letter of the title is addressed. Hal Willner’s collage-like score brings together audio excerpts of the diaries with songs by Tom Waits, Arvo Pärt, Henry Mancini, and Soviet futurist composer Alexander Mosolov. Long fascinated by Nijinsky’s diaries, Baryshnikov, the greatest dancer of his generation, sashays and staggers through Wilson’s landscape as he performs an exceptional, moving testimony of the last lucid moments in a man’s life. In Henry Miller’s words: “Had he not gone to the asylum we would have had in Nijinsky a writer equal to the dancer.”