Authors

Discussion

This paper discusses Bronisława Niżyńska’s (Bronislava Nijinska) leadership of the Balet Polski Reprezentacyjny’s inaugural 1937-1938 season. The Balet Polski was a cultural ensemble instituted by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to represent the Second Polish Republic abroad. The paper examines Polish reception of Bronisława Niżyńska’s leadership of the Balet Polski Reprezentacyjny from 1937-1938 to examine the supposed tension between modernism and folk culture in Polish ballet. To understand domestic reception of Niżyńska’s choreography for the Balet Polski, I refer to contemporary reviews of the company’s domestic tour that shed light on how Polish critics perceived her choreography. These reviews invite investigation into the balance between integration of national themes and European ‘universalism’ in Polish ballet; this question of Poland’s aesthetic self-conception was one which Polish literature, theatre, and music had attempted to address during the interwar period. At the centre of that questions remains the puzzling consideration of Niżyńska, who was situated between Europe’s modernist ballet tradition, heavily shaped by Russian émigrés, and Polish national culture. I examine Niżyńska’s Polish choreography in the nation’s greater oeuvre of music and theatre in the interwar period and suggest that the Balet Polski’s 1937-1938 season suggests alternative ways of reflecting on Niżyńska.