In 2005, the BBC produced a TV film entitled RIOT AT THE RITE about the 1913 premiere of the Stravinsky/Nijinsky ballet THE RITE OF SPRING. Given its first performance by the Ballets Russes on May 29, 1913 at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris (above), the ballet caused one of the great scandals in the history of the performing arts as the audience, failing to grasp it either musically or choreographically, erupted in catcalls and boos which later descended into fistfights and shouting matches. The musicians and dancers managed to finish the performance before complete madness seized the crowd.
From time to time I've done web searches to see if this film has become available on DVD; having recently re-watched the 2009 film COCO CHANEL AND IGOR STRAVINSKY, I commenced another search today and - while no DVD seems to have been released - I did find that RIOT AT THE RITE has appeared on YouTube in six installments, starting here. From that starting point you will see the remaining segments listed in the right-hand column of the YouTube page.
If I were you, I'd watch it now since you never know when things might disappear from YouTube.
The film is of particular interest in that it includes virually a complete performance of the the ballet, featuring the Royal Ballet's Zenaida Yanowsky as the Chosen One. Not that we actually see all of it: much of the time the camera is panning the audience or following the developing drama backstage. But if I'm not mistaken, the music is all there.
The actors chosen to play Nijinsky (Adam Garcia) and Diaghilev (Alex Jennings) don't look much like their historical counterparts. Aidan McArdle comes within hailing distance visually as Stravinsky, and you could believe that Christian McKay is Pierre Monteux (Monteux conducted the premiere and managed to finish the ballet against nearly insurmoutable odds). Rachael Stirling is a very attractive Marie Rambert. There's an odd scene where Nijinsky whisks Romola de Pulszky into a backstage closet, but nothing really happens; surely no such tete-a-tete ever occurred. The entire cast speaks the King's English without the various accents that the characters would have had in reality.
The most interesting scenes are those of rehearsals, both orchestral and choreographic. The musicians are dumbstruck by what they are asked to play. The dancers have never danced anything remotely like this, so the first studio sessions are chaotic. Tempers erupt as composer and choreographer face off; it's Mimi Rambert who keeps the peace (as she was - in reality - assigned to do by Diaghilev). A later rehearsal shows the dancers almost in harmony with the difficult score; even Stravinsky thinks it's starting to look good.
The great night arrives; the audience cannot grasp this new language of music and dance, and the rest is history. It's sometimes been thought that the uproar was pre-arranged; why else would people have brought whistles to the theatre? But the furore was surely more widespread than anything that a few troublemakers could have devised. I seem to recall reading that a dog was somehow smuggled into the auditorium and started barking and racing about, trying to escape.
RITE received only a few more Parisian performances and then was taken to London for a few more, following which it vanished from the Ballets Russes repertoire. By marrying Romola, Nijinsky lost his place in Diaghilev's company and in the impresario's private life as well. Soon madness took Nijinsky away from the mainstream of life.
It wasn't until the 1980s that reconstruction of Nijinsky's RITE was carried out by the Joffrey Ballet, drawing on such sources as Marie Rambert's notes from the time of the work's creation. It also entered the repertory of the Mariinsky.
Oringinal RITE OF SPRING costume design by Nicholas Roerich.
Many choreographers have made settings of the Stravinsky score which - as Diaghilev predicted - became recognized as a masterpiece. Among those that I have seen are those by Shen Wei; Paul Taylor's whimsical take on the score; a fresh and colorful version by Stijn Celis for Cedar Lake; and a thrilling rendering of the music as a solo by choreographer Andonis Foniadakis and danced by Ioanna Toumpakari in a veritable tour de force, one of the great singluar dance performances I have ever witnessed.
Above: a Paul B Goode production photo from Cedar Lake's RITE, choreographed by Stijn Celis.
In 2009, Louisville Ballet presented choreographer Adam Hougland's RITE OF SPRING, created especially for New York City Ballet's Wendy Whelan. Wendy generously contributed to my blog article about this RITE.
In 2013, the RITE OF SPRING will celebrate its 100th birthday. Wouldnt it be grand if one of our New York City-based dance companies would offer a new (or reconstructed!) setting of the ballet?
