Afternoon of a Faun (Nijinsky)

L'Après-midi d'un faune
Programme illustration by Léon Bakst for the ballet
Choreographer	Vaslav Nijinsky
Music	Claude Debussy
Based on	L'Après-midi d'un faune by Stéphane Mallarmé
Premiere	29 May 1912 Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris
Original ballet company	Ballets Russes
Design	Léon Bakst
Setting	Woodland glade
Created for	Sergei Diaghilev

The ballet The Afternoon of a Faun (French: L'Après-midi d'un faune) was choreographed by Vaslav Nijinsky for the Ballets Russes and first performed in the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris on 29 May 1912. Nijinsky danced the main part himself. As its score it used the Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune by Claude Debussy. Both the music and the ballet were inspired by the poem L'Après-midi d'un faune by Stéphane Mallarmé. The costumes and sets were designed by the painter Léon Bakst.

The style of the ballet, in which a young faun meets several nymphs, flirts with them and chases them, was deliberately archaic. In the original scenography designed by Léon Bakst, the dancers were presented as part of a large tableau, a staging reminiscent of an ancient Greek vase painting. They often moved across the stage in profile as if on a bas relief. The ballet was presented in bare feet and rejected classical formalism. The work had an overtly erotic subtext beneath its façade of Greek antiquity, ending with a scene of graphic sexual desire.

L'Après-midi d'un Faune is considered one of the first modern ballets and proved to be as controversial as Nijinsky's Jeux (1913) and Le Sacre du printemps (1913).