Vaslav Nijinsky was not blessed with a perfect ballet body (a colleague once remarked that he resembled a "factory worker").

While lunching one day with their influential supporter Lady Juliet Duff, Nijinsky and the composer Sergei Diaghilev were asked to sign her birthday book. Diaghilev wrote, "L'ami des dieux" (friend of the gods). Nijinsky's inscription? "Le Spectre a la rose" (The Spectre to the rose).