Today marks the centennial of the ballet's premiere (Incidentally, if you have the money, you can buy an annotated facsimile of the autograph full score, produced for the centennial).
100 years ago, the subversively creative team of Nijinsky and Stravinsky premiered Rite Of Spring in Paris to a crowd that rioted in disbelief and outrage, making the event one of the original protopunk moments of our time.
Stravinsky loved to take full credit for his work creating the ruckus, but other accounts confirm it wasn't just the music.
It's easy to see from the original choreographic reconstruction, brought to light by the Joffrey Ballet in 1989, why the dance -- maybe even more so than the score alone -- created such an uproar. The antithesis of ballet's flighty heavenbound trajectories, this was movement firmly rooted in the earth: pelvis and belly, contraction and restriction and struggle. Even after 90 years of modern dance, the original mold-shattering work is still bracingly fresh in many ways.
Other versions abound, of course, with varying artistic impact. The 1959 Bejart version of boy meets girl, boy mates girl doesn't age well: 54 years later, it's facile and obvious, titillating dated shock value but not much depth:
. Far more compelling are both the haunting, thought-provoking version by Pina Bausch :
and the terrifiying lonely vulnerability captured by Angelin Preljocaj (warning: the last segment of Preljocaj's version contains full nudity, but it seems well served in context ).
:
Preljocaj's take is somewhat sporadic and veers a little more to the hormonal come-hither aspects of Bejart's work than Bausch's piece, which puts a powerful spin on the tale of sacrifice as societal renewal implicit in the original. Preljocaj mixes both elements and with a sexuality much more seductive and complex than Bejart's soft-porn antics.
Overall, Preljocaj' take is a dark and lonely piece and triumphs over its weaker moments.
But it all started 100 years ago with that original subversion in Paris.
Raising a glass to the masters and to any art that defies the odds and breaks convention everywhere.
Here are the versions mentioned above, in playlist sequence:
100 years ago, the subversively creative team of Nijinsky and Stravinsky premiered Rite Of Spring in Paris to a crowd that rioted in disbelief and outrage, making the event one of the original protopunk moments of our time.
Stravinsky loved to take full credit for his work creating the ruckus, but other accounts confirm it wasn't just the music.
It's easy to see from the original choreographic reconstruction, brought to light by the Joffrey Ballet in 1989, why the dance -- maybe even more so than the score alone -- created such an uproar. The antithesis of ballet's flighty heavenbound trajectories, this was movement firmly rooted in the earth: pelvis and belly, contraction and restriction and struggle. Even after 90 years of modern dance, the original mold-shattering work is still bracingly fresh in many ways.
Other versions abound, of course, with varying artistic impact. The 1959 Bejart version of boy meets girl, boy mates girl doesn't age well: 54 years later, it's facile and obvious, titillating dated shock value but not much depth:
. Far more compelling are both the haunting, thought-provoking version by Pina Bausch :
and the terrifiying lonely vulnerability captured by Angelin Preljocaj (warning: the last segment of Preljocaj's version contains full nudity, but it seems well served in context ).
:
Preljocaj's take is somewhat sporadic and veers a little more to the hormonal come-hither aspects of Bejart's work than Bausch's piece, which puts a powerful spin on the tale of sacrifice as societal renewal implicit in the original. Preljocaj mixes both elements and with a sexuality much more seductive and complex than Bejart's soft-porn antics.
Overall, Preljocaj' take is a dark and lonely piece and triumphs over its weaker moments.
But it all started 100 years ago with that original subversion in Paris.
Raising a glass to the masters and to any art that defies the odds and breaks convention everywhere.
Here are the versions mentioned above, in playlist sequence:
