This year marks the 50th anniversary of Nijinsky’s death. His choreography is a study in grace and brutality, in his “madness” he invented modern dance, he was 50 years ahead of his time, his life was an erotic spectacle – narcissistic, instinctive, free – and his work captured the emerging rhythm of mind for a generation that was heading into the fearsome carnival of the Great War. But Nijinsky was a sleek gazelle trotting round the edge of a precipice; he was a primitive: how did he come to be the patron saint of modern art? – The Telegraph (London)