Rite of Spring

I went to see my friend Sadie dance the lead in "Rite of Spring" last night, and it was just as powerful as I had imagined. Something about Stravinsky's score feels both apocalyptic and erotic, which of course was the objective when we composed it, and a large part of the reason why the ballet incited a riot at its 1913 Paris premiere. The original choreography by Nijinsky was nothing a theater audience had seen before, being a strange mix of Russian folk dance, jagged free motion, and dance moves that focused more on movement below the pelvis. (This was all before the gyrations of Elvis and did much to inspire Martha Graham.) I remember as a child being terrified of the sequence in "Fantasia" chronicling the fall of the dinosaurs and set to Stravinsky's violent tones from this ballet. It is music that has the power to move nearly a hundred years on, and has lost none of its bite. Here is Pierre Boulez conducting the finale.