… when he was twenty-eight, Nijinsky stopped dancing and choreographing. He began his last recital, which he declared to be about the horrors of the First World War, by telling his audience, ‘I will show you how we live, how we suffer, how we artists create’. He then sat on a chair onstage for half an hour without moving. When he was encouraged by the spectator to begin his dance, he retorted angrily: ‘How dare you disturb me! I am not a machine, I will dance when I feel like it’.
from David Kishik's The Power of Life