Letter to a Man
Premiered on July 8, 2015 at the Caio Melisso Theater, Festival dei 2Mondi, Spoleto, Italy
Performed in English.
Mikhail Baryshnikov and Robert Wilson first worked together on a Video Portrait of Saint Sebastian, and then on The Old Woman, a theater piece based on the writings of absurdist Russian author Daniil Kharms. Their third collaboration, Letter to a Man, is based on autobiographical texts by Vaslav Nijinsky (1889-1950), one of the most celebrated dancers and choreographers of his time who danced in Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes and created seminal choreographies himself. His diaries, written in less than six weeks in 1919, document the young man’s descent into madness. They were first published in 1936.
“It is a communication so naked, so desperate, that it breaks the mold. We are face to face with reality, and it is almost unbearable...had he not gone to the asylum we would have had in Nijinsky a writer equal to the dancer.”