Ballet grows up: The Australian Ballet’s bold new era with Nijinsky

Mangakahia says that the richness of Neumeier’s Nijinsky is partly due to the wealth of material it has to draw on. “Someone who makes a story ballet will only be able to go so far with how much detail they can give you. With Nijinsky, he’s had books written about him, there are letters, his own journals, writings the doctors wrote about him. There are a lot of layers to this story.”

Let’s face it: your average prince role is hardly the kind to keep you studying up late at night, but Nijinsky is something else.

“It was an incredible experience to learn about this person. Usually, we say ‘character’ but this is not a character. It’s a person. And a dancer, too,” says Mangakahia.

Linnane has just finished one of the many biographies of Nijinsky. “I found the last part of the book so tragic, so sad. There was one line as the book closes, describing Nijinsky’s life: ’10 years growing, 10 years learning, 10 years dancing and 30 years in eclipse.’ That just broke my heart.”

Australian Ballet’s artistic director David Hallberg says that approaching a delicate subject such as madness through dance requires an especially careful touch. “I think that ballet specifically has the hardest task of many of the art forms because we are essentially non-verbal. We can’t rely on dialogue, sound, spoken word. We aren’t given the luxury that film is where nuances can be given a close-up. We have to emote to a big theatre, and for the most part, we have to do it without saying anything. So it is a challenge.”

Given the work’s more difficult themes, it’s rewarding to hear that the Australian Ballet equips its dancers with tools to leave their work at work. They’re taught exercises to “de-role” after a performance, finding different postures to their characters so they don’t carry them in their bodies out into the night.

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In Carmen, Linnane says, he played a character who eventually kills his wife. “It would finish right at this big psychological climax and then the curtain would come down, and you’d sort of just be there. So we used to sometimes get in a group and go into the studio and run around, laugh, be silly, then I’d get in the shower and play disco music to really get into a very different place.”

Nijinksy is an emotional work for Neumeier, too. The choreographer turns 86 this month, but is still committed to ensuring every rendition of this tale is made-to-measure. “He is 100 per cent committed to developing the work with the dancer in front of him. He’s not just coming to see the work as it was done when it first premiered. He’s changing things. He’s making it a bespoke experience for the dancer,” says Hallberg. “It’s a unique experience not only for the dancers but for the audience. They’re seeing something that’s really fresh, really alive, bubbling in front of them.”

Linnane adds that Neumeier makes “little changes everywhere he goes”.

“So often in ballet in particular because it is a fairly old art form, sometimes it can feel like you’re dancing a relic or an artefact,” he says. “So there’s already the gift that John is still alive and working, and the pieces are also alive and breathing.”

Ninjinsky is at The Regent Theatre from February 21.