(13) THEATER OF THE NEW: VIVA Stravinsky!
Just 6 days to the CENTENNIAL
of THE RITE OF SPRING V.29.1913
Riot at the Rite
http://bit.ly/ZDnl7W
This is an excellent production, if a bit British. Much
better than the French-Hollywood film, Coco & Igor.
This is especially so in that Nijinsky plays a strong
counterweight to Stravinsky, via Diaghilev, so we
experience the doubt, the outrage, the fatigue, AND
the tremendous challenge of THE RITE from the
dancer’s perspective. THE RITE is not only the key,
signature event of Music & the Arts of the past 250
years in Western culture; it is also the story of our
time. Why? Well, because it in a profound way
embodies the very energy of our relationship to
the living Earth, a relationship already troubled
before the Christian era. [For me, the signature
metaphorical event is the moment Apollo is said
to have driven out the Earth-goddess Gaia in Delphi,
about the time of Socrates.] The Rite of Spring,
with its fiercely balanced YANG / Apollonian & YIN /
Dionysian energies, suddenly manifested a new,
much longed-for, balance. In so doing, it still casts
a long shadow over our century. It is still poorly
played. [RHYTHM!] It is still compositionally
unsurpassed. [Burning all the music written AFTER
THE RITE would not be loss, but liberation!]
And it is still, in my view, largely misunderstood,
certainly by the wider culture simply because this
wider culture wants nothing to do with this new
energy. But the resurrection of Nijinsky’s ballet gives
me hope.