Bronislava Nijinska

Bronislava Nijinska (Polish: Bronisława Niżyńska; Russian: Бронисла́ва Фоми́нична Нижи́нская, Bronislava Fominichna Nizhinskaya) (January 8 1891 [O.S. December 27 1890]) was a Russian dancer, choreographer, and teacher of Polish descent.

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

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

Nijinska 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). Perhaps her most lasting contribution to both French music and European ballet was her choreography of Ravel's Boléro in 1928. 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. Bronislava Nijinska 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 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 Russian bass singer Feodor Chaliapin.

She was the subject of an album The Nijinska Chamber by Kate Westbrook and Mike Westbrook.

Her students included the prima ballerinas Maria Tallchief and Marjorie Tallchief as well as the dancer Cyd Charisse.

Nijinska was inducted into the National Museum of Dance's Mr. & Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney Hall of Fame in 1994.