My guess is that even those with minimal knowledge of music history are aware that the very first performance of “The Rite of Spring” resulted in a riot. Whether this turned out to be an exaggeration that grew with historical distance, the autobiography of the composer, Igor Stravinsky, claims that he had to escape the hostile audience reaction by climbing through the window of his dressing room. While it is probably true that Stravinsky’s dissonances rubbed many listeners the wrong way, the music itself was emanating from the orchestra pit of the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris during a performance by Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes of a new work choreographed by the company’s star dancer Vaslav Nijinsky. The subtitle of the ballet was “Pictures of Pagan Russia in Two Parts;” and Nijinsky seems to have dispensed with most, if not all, of the idioms of classical ballet into order to create a realistic account of a primitive society that celebrated the coming of spring by having a young girl in the tribe dance herself to death. Thus, many of those in the audience that had arrived expecting to see “the usual” ballet performance may have been more than a little irate about not getting their money’s worth!
That premiere performance of “The Rite of Spring” took place on May 29, 1913. For the most part, all accounts of what happened that evening can be traced back to hearsay. The ballet itself was quickly dropped from repertoire and only resurfaced in the Twenties with new choreography by Léonide Massine. However, much later in the twentieth century, Millicent Hodson set herself the task of reconstructing Nijinsky’s original choreography. Her resources included prompt books, contemporary sketches, and photographs. These were supplemented with further hearsay in the form of interviews, the most notable subject being Marie Rambert.
1913 photograph of dancers from the original production of “The Rite of Spring,” Julitska, Marie Rambert (performing as “Ramberg”), Jejerska, Boni, Boniecka, and Faithful (scanned from Thomas F. Kelly’s book First Nights: Five Musical Premieres, from Wikimedia Commons, public domain)
The result of these efforts was what might be called a “hypothesized reconstruction,” which was given its first performance by the Joffrey Ballet on September 30, 1987. This attracted sufficient attention that PBS broadcast a video recording of a Joffrey Ballet performance, probably made in a television studio. What was most memorable about that telecast was the way in which it prompted reactions that may not have been as strong as those of 1913 but still came close. I am not sure I ever encountered as much hostility about a PBS program as I had for this one, and most of that hostility came from people I had never considered to be avid followers of ballet or modern dance!
For better or worse, that telecast is now available for viewing on YouTube. It was originally posted in three separate parts by Fatova Mingus in January of 2010; but a user calling himself “Uncle Waldemar” edited those uploads and created a single half-hour video. The quality of the original leaves much to be desired, appearing to be a relatively low-quality digitization of an analog videotape source. Clearly, “Uncle Waldemar” did not have the ability to improve the content; nor did he have any control over commercial interruptions that are imposed on both versions.
Personally, I enjoyed the PBS broadcast when it was first aired. On the basis of the background material I could muster, I concluded that I had more respect for Hodson as an authority than any of the “armchair ballet experts” I subsequently encountered! Indeed, viewing this video one day after my encounter with Bronislava Nijinska’s choreography for “Les Noces,” I found myself with more appreciation for the iconoclasm of both brother and sister than I had previously experienced. My only real annoyance was with the cut of the orchestral introduction to the second part of “The Rite,” which, for all I know, had more to do with time constraints imposed by PBS than with the performance itself. (Unfortunately, I was never able to see Joffrey perform this piece in concert.)
As is the case with any YouTube offering, one has to take what one can get; but I feel that anyone familiar with the Stravinsky score should take advantage of seeing a viable hypothesis of what was happening on stage the first time that this particular music was performed in public.
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