Bronislava Nijinska

Bronislava Nijinska (; , Bronislava Fominichna Nizhinskaya; January 8, 1891 (old style 27 December 1890) - February 22, 1972)) was a Russian dancer, choreographer, and teacher of Polish descent.

Niżyńska was born in Minsk, the third child of the Polish dancers Tomasz and Eleonora Niżyńska (née Bereda). Her brother was Vaslav Nijinsky. She was just 4 years old when she made her theatrical debut in a Christmas pageant with her brothers in Nizhny Novgorod.

Niżyńska played a leading role in the pioneering venture that turned against 19th-century Classicism. A breakthrough came in 1910, when she created her first solo, the role Papillon in Le Carnival.

Niżynska was a member of the Imperial Ballet and then the Ballets Russes, for whom she choreographed her best known works, Les Noces (1923), The Blue Train (1924) and Les Biches (1924). She also choreographed the dances (to Felix Mendelssohn's music) for Max Reinhardt's 1935 film version of William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. Bronisława Niżyńska died in Pacific Palisades, California.

She was twice married. Her first husband was Alexandre Kochetovsky, a fellow Ballet Russes dancer by whom she had two children - a son, Leo Kochetovsky, who was tragically killed in a car accident and a daughter, Irina Nijinska, a ballet dancer in her own right who subsequently carried on her work, including editing and publishing her mother's memoirs in 1972. The true love of her life, but to whom she was never married, was the...
Read More