The Rite of Spring

On the 29th of May, 1913 Nijinsky premiered Le Sacre du Printemps.

"Sacre shows spring returning after a glacial prehistorical winter in Russia. The earth is budding with fertility, squirming with new life. There are processions and dances of people awakened. Youths and elders convene. A young virgin is chosen for the ritual sacrifice, and she dances herself to death." (p.67)

Nijinsky went in a new direction with the choreography:

"He forced the dancers to the ground, feet turned in with knees unbent, hands, elbows, and faces pointing down.... Nijinsky thrust the dancers into circles, single, double, triple, and interlocking loops of seething humanity. All conventions of classical ballet were eliminated. There was something ruthlessly primitive even bestial about his choreography." (p.67)

After a programme that began with the romantic music of Chopin setting off a classical ballet the Parisian audience were subjected to the shrieking music of Stravinsky and the anti-classical ballet of Nijinsky. There was a riot.

Madness, they cried from the audience.

The booing and jeering was so loud the dancers couldn't hear the orchestra. Nijinsky stood in the wings on a chair shouting numbers to his dancers while Stravinsky held on to his tuxedo tails.

Now it's so mainstream The Rite of Spring has to be updated. Funny how times change. How the madness of one generation becomes the conventional in another.

I suppose that in 1913 Europeans thought that reason and order and pleasing music with pleasing forms was why their civilisation was great, and why war had been eliminated from the continent - a relic of a more barbaric era.