- Brother of Bronislava Njinska
- He was a protégé of impresario Sergei Diaghilev.
- Developed an original notation for dance with his own illustrations. It was not available until after the death of his wife, Romola.
- Spent the vast majority of his married life in various mental institutions.
- He finally made his true mark as a Ballet-Master in the year 1912. He choreographed for Diaghilev's Ballets Russes the ballets "L'Après-midi d'un faune", "Jeux", and "Le Sacre du printemps". His particular brand of choreography was especially radical and daring. Rather than the traditional smooth fluid graceful movements that ballet was known for, Vaslav's invented angular herky-jerky movements that broke a lot of the conventions of performing dance itself.
- There are life-size statues of him as the Sculpture of Vaslav and Bronislava Nijinsky by Giennadij Jerszow, the Grand Theatre, Warsaw and the Tombstone of Vaslav Nijinsky in Montmartre Cemetery in Paris, showing year of birth as 1889. The statue, donated by dancer Serge Lifar, shows Nijinsky in character as the puppet Petrushka.
- There is a ballet based on his own life called "Nijinsky".
- His own parents were both established ballet dancers, who gave him his first lesson. He took lessons as a real dancer at age 4.
- On Sunday, 19 January 1919, Vaslav Nijinsky made one last public appearance; a solo improvised performance at the Suvretta House in St Moritz. The crowd consisted of skiers, hotel guests, wealthy visitors from abroad, war refugees, assorted social climbers. Bertha Asseo, a family friend, played the piano. Vaslav stood still for a good while before he finally started moving. His dance reflected wide range of feelings from sadness, anger to joyfulness. His strong feelings towards the devastation of the war, and people who did nothing to stop it were also reflected in his dance.
- Nijinsky's Diary was written during the six weeks in 1919 he spent in Switzerland before being committed to the asylum to Zurich. It reflected the decline of his household into chaos.[61] He elevated feeling and action in his writing. It combined elements of autobiography with appeals for compassion toward the less fortunate. Discovering the three notebooks of the diary years later, plus another with letters to a variety of people, his wife published a bowdlerized version of the diary in 1936, translated into English by Jennifer Mattingly. She deleted about 40 per cent of the diary, especially references to bodily functions, sex, and homosexuality, recasting Nijinsky as an "involuntary homosexual." She also removed some of his more unflattering references to her and others close to their household. She moved sections around, obscuring the "march of events" obvious in the original version and toning down some of the odder portions, including trying to distinguish between sections in which he writes as God and others as himself (in the original all such sections are written the same.).
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