Stravinsky's Rite of Spring - Dances of the Young Girls
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Stumble ThisThis might be NSFW if you live in Paris in 1913. When this ballet first premiered, the violence and lasciviousness that it depicted caused rioting. See what you think of the entrance of the dancers. Whoa.
Does anybody here know the story behind this choreography to the rite of spring?
I'd like to see how they choreograph the final parts, with the sacrifice, etc.
Does anybody here know the story behind this choreography to the rite of spring?
I'd like to see how they choreograph the final parts, with the sacrifice, etc.
Thanks.
Paris was full of art connoisseurs who knew a thing or two of art styles. When This ballet was first shown, the idea of sacrifice and purposely off-beat tempo made everyone angry and they rioted. If you listen closely, none of the sounds are coordinated and they just seem to be everywhere. Even when the music starts with the 'bom bom bom bom bom' in 3:37 it's purposely accented in random timing to break the rhythmic feel, which was the way Stravinsky intended in order to give it a more 'chaotic' feel. Certainly bizzare and Parisians didn't know what to make of this, so they got angry.
Today we can probably categorize his work as 'expressionist' or something. But back then this was a completely different ballfield. Apparently Starvinsky came up with this "sacrificing virginity" idea based on things he observed when he was growing up back in native Russia. Musta been some kind of local tradition. Some rural villages in Japan still does it even to this day I hear.
I guess closest thing we could relate to is like walking into a comedy club in New York and start rapping about child molestation as you're holding up the finger and and repeating the words " *uck the East Coast!!! " Something like that.
Anyone geeky enough to know what I'm talking about here?
http://www.amazon.com/Halo-Original-Soundtrack-Various-Artists/dp/B000067UO7/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/102-0010207-1801742?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1191445068&sr=1-1
Click on 'listen to samples', then go click no.13 - Devils... Monsters...
Quotes from the choreographer, Angelin Preljocaj, from the web site for his ballet company, Ballet Preljocaj.
“ Whenever I listen to Igor Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring" - veritable ground-swell of music of the 20th century - what I feel transpires through this work is as much a matter of fascination as of a feeling of ancestral terror.
This music unceasingly carries along with it a slowly rising force of desire, and at the same time, a kind of controlled panic.
A blend of madness at the thought of perpetrating an act literally dictated by the very molecules of our being and at the same time of jubilation stimulated by our senses ? a leap forward imbued here with the power of an irremediable force.
When faced with this ancestral mechanism, the bodies of the dancers, drunk with exhaustion, have no choice but to participate in this ritual.
Bringing the clan together around an impulse that is, in the end, biological, the Rite of Spring reminds us that as long as men and women continue in their spiritual, cultural or intellectual quest, they will unceasingly and inevitably stumble against this weakness.
As Pascal Quignard says in "sex and fright":
"we carry with us the mental disarray of our own conception.
There is no image that shocks us more than that of reminding us of the gestures of our very inception”
More at http://www.preljocaj.org/