The previous post closed with an image of Vadym Meller's sketch for Bronislava Nijinska's "Mask". So let's start this new post from another sketch by Meller to make an unusual comparison, based on assonance and themes rather than looks.
In 1919, Meller did a costume sketch of Nijinska in "Mephisto Valse", in which the silhouette of the dancer was rendered a cubo-futurist style. But it was actually the dancer's brother, Ballets Russes star Vaslav Nijinsky, who had started working on a romantic and languorous choreography for "Mephisto Valse".
Vaslav Nijinsky worked on a system of dance notation while he was interned with his family in Budapest, Hungary, during World War I. At the time, he hoped to invent signs which enabled the gestures of dance to be fixed for all time and he worked on new ballets, one of them set to Franz Liszt's "Mephisto Waltz".
Nijinsky conceived "Mephisto Valse" as a "choreographic poem" and he tried to develop it in New York, but the ballet was never staged. His sister Bronislava Nijinska would eventually stage in Kyiv, where she founded her dance school, L'Ecole de Mouvement (School of Movement), "Mephisto Valse" (1919) and "Twelfth Rapsody" (1920) on music by Liszt, that she transformed into two plotless abstract ballet compositions.
A 1921 photograph exists portraying Nijinska in a costume designed by Léon Bakst for Nijinsky apparently as a moth in "Papillon", a ballet by Nicholas Legat. The Art Nouveau costume was altered in Alexandra Exter's studio for Nijinska's 1919 shows in Kyiv: without funds to make new costumes Nijinsky’s costume was reworked to fit the Russian avant-garde style of the choreography which suited Nijinska's modern abstract solos such as "Mephisto Valse". Kyra, Nijinsky's daughter, instead starred in "Mephisto Valse" choreographed by Frederick Ashton.
Franz Liszt composed four Mephisto Waltzes (Mephisto-Walzer) between 1859 and 1885 (associated with the Mephisto Waltzes there is also the Mephisto Polka). The first Mephisto Waltz is a typical example of program music, an episode that moves from Nikolaus Lenau's 1836 verse drama "Faust", derived from Goethe's.
In Lenau's work, Faust confronts an absurd life devoid of any values: seduced by the devil Mephistopheles he embarks on a course of sin and crime. In the first waltz Mephistopheles induces Faust to take part in a wedding feast in progress in a village and bewitches the dancers, who give themselves over to love. The other waltzes are characterized by a diabolic energy, alternated to quieter motifs, chromatic progressions and non-functional harmonies. In Liszt's compositions, the devilish Mephisto paves the way for the music of the future.
In 1986 there was an attempt at combining the devilish Mephistopheles with technology and the future: the film "Mefisto Funk" directed by Marco Poma with music by Maurizio Marsico was an experimental reinterpretation of Goethe's "Faust", filmed in Betamax and featuring some early computerized effects.
In the film Mefisto (Flavio Bonacci) is a master of technology and bewitches his victim Simone (Alessandro Ferrara) from the TV screen.
Mefisto takes him to a TV station: here, thanks to hidden cameras, the devil observes and monitors everything and everyone, including Margherita (Laura Ferrari). Simone falls in love with her, but his journey is not over as Mephisto takes him to a computer center where he is approached by an artificial intelligence.
Including some scenes that bizarrely pre-date The Matrix, the film also featured the odd philosophical dilemma: Mefisto asks the protagonist if he prefers watching without being watched or watching and being watched, something that seem to anticipate the power of surveillance cameras in our society but also our obsession with selfies.
Costume-wise, the film featured designs by the late Italian designer Cinzia Ruggeri that are currently included in a retrospective dedicated to Ruggeri at London's Goldsmiths CCA.
In the film Mefisto was clad in a faux fur teal coat that didn't really look very devilish, but that had a clever reference to his real identity - the pockets were indeed lined in red (a classic Ruggeri trick).
Simone's wardrobe included instead a black wool tailored jacket with an outbreast pocket with an irregular zigzagging motif forming two peaks, maybe a subtle sign of a divergent mind (why messing around with a jacket when a detail can reveal the truth about the wearer?). Ruggeri also created for the film a selection of shirts with hand-painted faces that were donned by the thugs attacking Simone (all the designs - shirts and faux fur coat included - were part of Ruggeri's 1986 "Fluxus" collection, and were featured in the video that accompanied it, shot by Emilio Simonetti).
Inspiring ballets, music pieces, dramas or films (and costumes obviously...), Mephistopheles is the classic personification of evil and of a twisted mind that will never go out of fashion. So, what will your Mephisto / Mefisto look like?
Comments