The Rite of Spring Ballet
The Initial Controversy Behind the Ballet
The year was 1912 when Russian composer Igor Stravinsky teamed up with fellow countryman and ballet producer Sergei Diaghilev to write the music for what was to be one of the most controversial ballets in history.
Throughout their careers, Stravinsky and Diaghilev teamed up a number of times to produce a total of five ballets, but The Rite of Spring was the only one that elicited an uproar from the public.
What Is the Ballet About?
The title seems innocuous enough−The Rite of Spring could easily be imagined as something as mundane as hunting for Easter eggs. The particular rite in this ballet, however, is meant to depict the fertility ceremonies of pagan Russia (the subtitle to Rite of Spring is Pictures from Pagan Russia). While there is a gentle orchestral introduction, the ballet choreography shows a pagan spring ceremony in full swing.
The ballet opens with a young girl dancing at the spring rite; probably dancing rather suggestively if the catcalls and comments of the 1913 audience are anything to go by.1 The accompanying music from the orchestra is harshly loud and dissonant, and has an unrelenting beat reminiscent of the pounding drums Native Americans or Africans use for their ritual dances.
Why is this a Controversy?
So far, this seems pretty run-of-the-mill; nothing that couldn’t be seen in a PG13 movie. For the early twentieth century European society, it was a shock to the senses. The Rite of Spring was gasp-worthy on a number of notes, the biggest being the ballet’s subject material.
- the opening scene of the dancing girls. The problem here is that one of these young dancing maidens ends up offered as a spring sacrifice to the gods. Something this flagrantly primal had never been seen on stage before, and it was a shock.
- the dance itself. Not only were the girls in effect dancing to their death, but the dance itself was not quaint. It was heavy and primal, and one dancer said of the choreography, “With every leap we landed heavily enough to jar every organ in us.”2
- the costumes. The dancing maidens in the opening scene were not arrayed in pretty finery, but drab and−well, primal, costumes. This was not the magnificent ballet attire that had come to be expected.
- the music. Stravinsky and Diaghilev knew the ballet would be an eye-opener, and Stravinsky didn’t hesitate to portray this musically. The thick, dissonant chords he uses after a bassoon introduction are grating on an ear accustomed to the pleasant harmonies of Mozart or Beethoven. To further complicate matters, the already complex meter changes like a schizophrenic in several sections.
"I saw a production of Rite of Spring, and it wasn’t edgy to me at all."
Culture today is so inundated with different sights and sounds that it’s difficult to understand the reaction The Rite of Spring had on the unassuming public of 1913. To put it in perspective, one might try to imagine the reaction the public had over Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ.
Where the beginning of the Rite of Spring was seen as too overtly primal to show in a ballet, the Passion was denounced as being overly brutal. Still, with television and all the extra media sources we have, the effect of anything on the public is watered down considerably.
No one knew what to expect from the Rite of Spring except the people who produced it, and this is why it produced such an electric response.
Citations:
http://www.npr.org/programs/specials/milestones/991110.motm.riteofspring.html
Sources:
Chicago Symphony Orchestra Program Notes
Eksteins, Modris. Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age
Watch The Young Maidens’ Dance
Originial set design for Rite of Spring
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