Vaslav Nijinsky's career lasted barely a decade before mental illness ended it permanently in 1919, yet his impact on ballet is second to none. As principal dancer of the Ballets Russes under Sergei Diaghilev he combined a superhuman elevation with an expressive intensity that contemporaries struggled to describe in rational terms, and his choreographic debut -- L'Apres-midi d'un faune (1912) -- caused a scandal that put ballet on the front pages of European newspapers. His choreography for The Rite of Spring (1913) caused the most notorious riot in performing arts history and is now regarded as the founding document of 20th-century modernism in dance.
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