is a ballet originally choreographed by Nijinsky. It tells the tale of a Faun (half-man/goat) who awakes to find himself among a group of forest Nymphs. This all-female entourage plays with the curious Faun, but as the Faun gets more frisky sexually, they began to run away from him, all but one anyway. The remaining Nymph proceeds to flirt and tease him, he pursues and tries to catch her, and eventually they have sex. The Faun awakes to find her gone, he sees three Nymphs, then goes to sleep alone. This is meant to indicate this might have all been a dream, but the Nymph left her scarf behind, and then he sees the nymphs. They are clearly leaving, and the Faun is left alone.

Nijinsky choreographed the ballet to mimic the posture and stances that are seen on Greek vases in 1912, set to Debussey's Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune. The dancers, including Nijinsky as the Faun, create two-dimensional tableaus with their bodies. The women playing the Nymphs are clad in something similar to Flapper dresses. While they are not Amazons, or even warriors, in the ballet, they are an all-female group of mythical beings. Like Artemis, they represent the wilds.

If you replace the Faun with Hercules and the Nymphs with Amazons, you have almost the same story unfolding semiotically. A single male interloper has some sort of involvement with one woman in a group of only women, leaves with a memento or prize, in both cases a piece of clothing, scarf and belt.

Ballet is a completely visual rhetoric artform. Nijinsky brilliantly uses contorted postures to mimic the logos of 2-dimensions. We see ethos playing out in the hierarchy between the main Nymph and the Faun. Pathos is extremely sexual in this ballet, causing it to be quite controversial in the early part of the 20th century.

Through body paint, poses, and gestures, the phallus is displayed by the Faun, and there are even instances that are similar to a man “whipping it out” and/or pelvic thrusting, while the female Nymphs have to fend it off or run away from it. It is not subtle.

The following video is a 1964 performance: https://youtu.be/2GqGVkfUip8