Rite of Spring (Sacré du Printemps)

Photo by Foteini Christofilopoulou. Reblogged

A friend persuaded me to go and see The Rite of Spring, which was on at The Place Theatre from 17th to 18th May. It was a new work choreographed by Bharatanatyam dancer Seeta Patel, supported by the Bagri Foundation and commissioned by The Place.  I hesitated to begin with, somehow I was not keen, but I went, partly to please my friend, whom I wanted to meet to catch up with  - she was about to go away on a long holiday.
 I used to teach about such 'experimental and cutting edge' dancing when I lectured, eventually feeling crushed by the tedium of it all  - I look back, and it seems like someone else's life; I often wonder what compelled me to do it for as long as I did, I have no fond memories of that life. So going to see this performance was like putting the clock back. It felt weird, especially when I met people I had forgotten all about and was unable to recognise -  embarrassingly, I  had to rely on my friend to tell me who they were, as she seemed to know them well.
I did not like the performance.  I could not make out why, exactly, so I went back on Saturday, I forced myself to go.  If I do not like something, I have to know why; it's never enough for me to say 'I don't like it.'   I sat through it again. This time I was sitting next to an unknown,  utterly obnoxious woman, who kept on fidgeting in her seat, like those people on the tube, usually men,  who place their elbows on both armrests and sprawl themselves. I always curse them inwardly.
I arrived just before the performance began and left while the audience was still clapping, to spare myself any other awkward encounter, like the previous day.
Before The Rite, we had to sit through an excerpt from another 'experimental and cutting edge' choreography by Patel and a cello solo performance which would have been fine in another context but was totally unnecessary in this one. I will not even attempt to speculate on what prompted this bizarre programming.
Anyway, Patel's Rite improved on second viewing, I noticed some good moments in the choreography, I give her that.  I appreciated the effort she made to create something uniquely hers, choreographing The Rite of Spring is no easy task.  But wanting to be different was Patel's downfall, it felt she was trying to tick all the boxes, and the work did not grab me at all. So on a scale of 1 to 10, I would place it between 5 and 6.

iTMOi, Akram Khan Company, Photo: Rex Features. Reblogged

The Rite of Spring with a score by Stravinsky was one of the ballets of  Diaghilev's Ballet Russes.  First shown in Paris in 1913, the audience hated it, and the performance was interrupted because a fight broke out.
But a year later, Stravinsky was hailed as a genius musician, and The Rite was applauded as one of the most brilliant music pieces ever composed.
The original ballet fell into oblivion until Millicent Hodson and her husband Kenneth Archer reconstructed it.  The reconstructed ballet premiered in 1987 in New York, danced by Joffrey Ballet. The story of the reconstruction is most fascinating and intriguing, and I would encourage you to hear  Dr Hodson's account, available here and here.
Though we have lost the original ballet,  Stravinsky's powerful score has inspired hundreds of choreographers to recreate their own version of The Rite. There have been extraordinary ballets made by Maurice Béjart, Pina Bausch (my personal favourite) and in more recent years by Akram Khan, the very talented contemporary dance choreographer of Bangladeshi origin. I love Khan's version, entitled  in the Mind of igor (iTMOi), and programmed in 2013, one hundred years after the original production of The Rite. Khan did not use  Stravinsky's score at all except for a musical line that is referenced, and the piece was not a literal rendition of the story of the Chosen One, a maiden who is forced to dance herself to death.  It really was an exploration of Stravinsky's psyche, reimagined when he composed The Rite. Yet Khan captured the essence of The Rite and his choreography has the violence and brutality of  Stravinsky's famous score,  embodied in the original ballet - it was for this reason that the audience at its premiere in 1913 hated it. The cruelty of the pagan narrative was essential to the development of the musical composition, something that occasionally people seem to forget.
 I can listen to  Stravinsky's score for hours and watch Khan's iTMOi again and again. I cannot do that with Seeta Patel's Rite. If I went back, it was only for my own satisfaction, to answer my own questions, find out why my reaction was what it was.

Seeta Patel's choreography is somewhat bland. Her Chosen One is no longer a girl but a 'genderless' being; but in her reimagining, Patel fails to create a piece that is memorable and that truly matches the intensity of the score. I also find her dubbing of The Rite as a joyous experience for the audience, somewhat amusing. The Rite is not joyous at all. It is profoundly dark. At the heart of it, there is a human sacrifice. In my understanding, the Chosen One is not happy to be sacrificed and there is no sense of duty and acceptance of a higher fate. The Chosen One is a doomed creature, her fate is tragic and pointlessly violent. It is a narrative that does not convey a joyous experience, on the contrary, one feels overwhelmed by its savagery. Patel tries at the end, almost as an afterthought, to hint at entrapment, but it is not enough. Her Chosen One is an incarnation of the Divine, but it is an interpretation that feels somewhat forced.
There have been other versions of The Rite programmed earlier this year, it is a score and a theme that never ceases to be popular.
No doubt, there will be more. At some point, someone will have the bright idea of creating a Top One Hundred list of all the versions of the Rite. On second thoughts, it's not such a brilliant idea after all.