The afternoon of a faun

Art Academy in Osijek – Theatre Department, under the mentorship of Barbara Matijević
Dance Modernism exam, prof. Barbara Matijević (de facto)
Performers: Andrea Giordani and Goran Guksić
Choreography: Vaslav Nijinsky
Music: Claude Debussy

The Afternoon of a Faun (1912), the key work of dance modernism, was written by dance notation that was finally deciphred by Anne Hutchinson in 1988.

In the year 2000, Quator Albrecht Knust, dancers and dance historians group, used the new transcription as the starting point for the exploration of dance memory and the actuality of the dance modernism heritage. Wishing to raise the awareness of the influence of that heritage on contemporary dance and thought, they re-created Nijinsky’s choreography with several choreographers and dancers, alternating several versions – the integral version with the faun and seven nymphs, duet of the faun and the big nymph, the faun’s score as a solo.

Boris Charmatz, one of the participants of that project, passed the faun’s score to Barbara Matijević, and she passed it to her second year students of acting and puppetry at the Art Academy in Osijek, exploring the methods of the dynamic, emancipatory relationship to the history of dance, and the problems of the production, transmission and interpretation.

At their own initiative, students Goran Guksić and Andrea Giordani reconstructed through the video the big nymph’s score as well, and will present Nijinsky’s choreography as a duet.