Before being diagnosed with schizophrenia in 1919, legendary Russian ballet dancer Vaslav Nijinsky was planning to stage what would have been Argentina’s first ever ballet piece. Caaporá, a tale of resurrection and mourning written by Ricardo Güiraldes and Alfredo González Garaño, was inspired by the mystical Guaraní legend of the urutaú bird.

More than a hundred years later, Herman Cornejo, an Argentine principal dancer at the American Ballet Theater, picked up Nijinsky’s unfulfilled project as a base for his work Anima Animal. The show had its U.S. premiere in New York at the Joyce Theater on February 18. It will then move to Miami on February 25 as part of a full gala evening.

In 1917, the Caaporá authors approached Nijinsky during his last tour through Argentina and Uruguay. The dancer became fascinated with the play, and reportedly contacted composer Igor Stravinsky, who wrote the score for The Firebird, to compose the music for what would have been Argentina’s first ballet. It was striking that a work of that scale was based around indigenous culture, which was widely ignored and rendered invisible at the time.

But two years later, Nijinsky was diagnosed with a mental illness that drove him off the stage forever, and the project fell into oblivion. The Caaporá........

© Buenos Aires Herald