Thierry Malandain | L'Après-midi d'un faune (Afternoon of a Faun) / 1995

the faun atop a kleenex box

by Douglas Messerli

 

Thierry Malandain (choreography and performance) L'Après-midi d'un faune (Afternoon of a Faun) / 1995

 

Thierry Malandain’s version of The Afternoon of a Faun takes the famous ballet further into pure homoerotic and male homosexual directions. If in Vaslav Nijinsky’s original it was the nymphs with whom the faun was enchanted, in this case there are no classic dancers imitating the figures of Greek urns. The dancer Malandain appears only in his dance belt, otherwise nude, and no women are allowed into his imaginary world except as big bubbles of plastic.

    His is a pure male dance, displaying as much as his body as the theater of the day allowed. This work is totally symbolic, for when he reaches for the veil dropped my one of the visiting nymphs left behind, it is simply out of the Kleenex box upon which he apparently resides. The fetish becomes even more obvious as he lays down to have sex with the garment, actually being consumed by the Kleenex box itself.

     This takes the women out of the picture and centers our vision only on the male dancer, which Nureyev almost achieved but because of his attempt to recreate Nijinsky’s version could not be eliminated, although they become even in that version ephemeral illusions. In Malandain’s version they are missing, and we must comprehend his almost nude representation of the dance as an excitement to homoerotic desire.

     Malandain himself describes it:

 

"A faun is lying on a rock when nymphs appear. He observes them, then approaches. Frightened, they run away, except for one. But when he tries to grab her, she moves away, dropping a veil at her feet. The faun seizes it, carries it to his rock, and stretches out on the scarf in an act of love.

      From this argument, I primarily retain the faun's desire and the expression of his sensuality in dreams and fantasy. My proposal does not refer to ancient Greece and its sylvan landscapes, which is why the rock where he takes refuge is no longer the mound painted by Léon Bakst, but a Kleenex box. Due to the innovative nature of the choreography, but also to Nijinsky's gestures of ‘erotic bestiality,’ the first performance was disrupted by the audience's uproar. This carnal pleasure being at the very heart of the work, like the original, depicts my faun evolving in a fantastical and sensual world. Except that it's not a legendary creature, half-man, half-beast, but a solitary young man pouring out his desire to the same hazy memory of love.”

   

      Once more, like the Nureyev version, the focus is on the male, and the viewer can only explore deeply the body of male desire, making us realize just how truly gay this dance was.

       But, obviously, this is a very funny version of the classic, particularly when he falls into the Kleenex box in which he is clearly ready to clean-up from his cum.

       Malandain, born in 1959, followed a classical dance career, working with several companies that explored modern conceptions of dance. But in 1997 he created his own company Ballet Biarritz for which he created numerous original pieces and won several awards for his work.

 

Los Angeles, April 27, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (2025).