Letter to a Man
Opening Night: October 15, 2016
Closing: October 30, 2016
Theater: BAM Harvey Theater
Mikhail Baryshnikov (The Old Woman, 2014 Winter/Spring) steps inside the splintering psyche of one of the greatest dancers in history in director Robert Wilson’s staging of Vaslav Nijinsky’s diaries. The text chronicles the onset of the iconic Russian performer’s schizophrenia in 1919, tracing the contours of his profound isolation, tormented sexuality and spirituality, and preoccupation with erstwhile lover and Ballets Russes founder Sergei Diaghilev. Hal Willner’s collage-like score weaves audio fragments of the diary with a century-spanning soundtrack of songs by Tom Waits, Arvo Pärt, Henry Mancini, and Soviet futurist composer Alexander Mosolov, as our coat-tailed subject sashays and staggers through Wilson’s saturated lightscapes.
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October 21, 2016
Mikhail Baryshnikov, one of the great ballet dancers of the late 20th century, tries to evoke the violently disordered mind of Vaslav Nijinsky, one of the great ballet dancers of the early 20th century, in “Letter to a Man,” an opaque and frustrating work of dance theater being presented at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. It takes just a glance at the visual aspects of the production — the vampire-white makeup on Mr. Baryshnikov’s face would probably suffice, actually — to clock his collaborator in this misguided enterprise: Robert Wilson, the theater auteur known for his chilly and glacially paced, if often hypnotically beautiful, work. Mr. Wilson is credited with the direction, set design and lighting concept, “with” Mr. Baryshnikov.
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