Nijinsky's notebooks

Winter 1919, Vaslav Nijinsky writes, day and night, from Switzerland, where he has taken refuge two years earlier. His wife had him forcibly committed to a psychiatric hospital and falsified his manuscripts before publishing them as the writing of a schizophrenic.

Having had enough of the Russian choreographer, designer and writer being reduced to a psychiatric case, Madeleine Abassade embarked on a fascinating investigation [...]. With rigor and passion, she follows in Nijinsky's footsteps in France, Russia and Spain [...], examining his relationship with his wife, who had him interned in Zurich and censored the first version of the Cahiers. She also sheds light on his political thinking, highlighting Tolstoy's influence on the vision of the people, of violence, of the man who wanted to dance "for the poor". This wealth of information feeds her empathetic dissection of the Cahiers. [...] All the better to make you want to read them like a choreography. Rosita Boisseau, Le Monde

Madeleine Abassade holds degrees in dance and philosophy, and has worked as a cultural coordinator in psychiatric institutions, a dancer for José Montalvo, a journalist for Cassandre magazine, and as a dancer-choreographer.