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Stravinsky and Nijinsky
The most infamous riot in the history of the performing arts began with the violins in Stravinsky’s “The Rite of Spring.” But more remarkable than the fistfight was the way the piece revolutionized classical music and ballet.
On the night of May 29, 1913, an elegant Parisian crowd assembled for the first performance of Igor Stravinsky’s eagerly anticipated new ballet, “The Rite of Spring.” The opening seemed promising, but then the violins kicked in with a pulsing chord so dissonant that it made spectators wince. As the orchestra continued, the audience hissed and booed. They rose to their feet and shouted—some defending the music, but most denouncing it. People began whacking each other with canes, umbrellas, and, before long, bare fists. Stravinsky’s musical revolution had arrived.
Prelude to “The Rite”
By one account, the idea for “The Rite of Spring” came to Stravinsky in a dream. He envisioned a pagan rebirth ritual, with people throwing themselves before vengeful gods. Rather than a cheerful celebration of springtime, it was a dark and superstitious rite. To compose music appropriate for such a vision, Stravinsky tossed aside convention and broke new ground in rhythm and harmony. He constructed atonal chords never heard before and developed a meter so complex that he struggled to accurately record it on paper. At times in the piece, parts of the orchestra actually seem to be playing against each other.
Stravinsky first performed “The Rite of Spring” for ballet director Sergei Diaghilev and orchestra conductor Pierre Monteux. Both men were shocked and overwhelmed. Later, Monteux wrote that he didn’t understand one note of it and wanted to flee the room. Nevertheless, plans for the ballet got under way. Diaghilev entrusted the choreography to dance phenom Vaslav Nijinsky, whose steps proved just as inspired as the music.
Concept, costumes, and set designs by Nicholas Roerich.
The first signs of trouble came during rehearsals. The ballerinas complained that Nijinsky’s flat-footed, straight-knee jumps jarred them to their bones, and the musicians struggled to keep up with Stravinsky’s galloping pace. At one point, after practicing a particularly dissonant section, the orchestra couldn’t help but burst into nervous laughter.
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A ground squirrel named Richardson loves to slip into his tutu and dance to Bach’s Third Brandenburg Concerto. And he’s proud enough of his abilities to show them off on YouTube.
-via WTF Japan Seriously
A school in São Paulo, Brazil trains people who are visually impaired — many completely blind since birth — to be graceful and coordinated ballet dancers. Fernanda Bianchini opened her school in 1995 and developed an effective way of teaching dance by touch to hundreds of students. A few of her students have even become professional dancers.
-via Oddity Central | Previously: Super Mario Bros. Ballet
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Seeing a ballerina en pointe is impressive, but not as impressive as it was 200 years ago. Competition among dancers means that everyone trains for dancing on the toes, and the quality of the shoes means that all dancers en pointe look the same. Whitney Laemmli of the University of Pennsylvania says the standardization of slippers was a deliberate method of standardizing ballerinas.
George Balanchine, the charismatic director who ran the New York City Ballet and its School of American Ballet, rethought pointe shoes. He worked with Salvatore Capezio to develop and patent pointe shoes to produced the exact lines of the foot and leg he thought beautiful, and to be quieter and less clunky than earlier pointe shoes. He required all dancers (not just the principals) to go on pointe — and not for a few short moments, but for hours at a time.
Laemmli argues that the new shoes forced dancers’ bodies to move in new ways. Dancers on this pointe regimen developed characteristically long, lean leg muscles. Balanchine also encouraged dancers to let the shoes remake their bodies, including developing bunions that gave the foot just the right line. And as their bodies were remade, dancers became “like IBM machines,” modern and indistinguishable.
Link -via Boing Boing
(Image credit: Flickr user kirikiri)
Leeloo’s costume for this year makes me think that the original Star Wars trilogy could make a great ballet. We must see Jabba dance with the outer grace that he hides within.
Link -via Fashionably Geek
There's ballet ... then there's light bulb ballet. Take a look at this beautifully choreographed Dance of the Light Bulbs by Eleazar Fanjul (it starts slow, but give it time ...)
Try doing that on those curly CFLs, Eco-Nazis! ;)
Hit play or go to Link [YouTube] - via LikeCool
In case you didn’t know, Neatorama’s social media guru David Israel is also a music composer. One of his works is a commissioned score for the Paul Taylor Ballet production of The Word, which is running at City Center in New York City until March 6th. After that, the show will go on the road.
The score is based on the Greek Liturgy and is, to the best of my knowledge, the only Mass ever written without words. You can find ticket info right here and tour info right over here. And you can listen to some of the music right here.
Link -via mental_floss
Children at the Maria Imaculada School in Porto Alegre, Brazil, put on a Super Mario-themed classical ballet. It was entitled “The Abduction of Princess Peach.” I’m waiting until they do Grand Theft Auto.
Link (Google Translate) via Kotaku | Photo: Reino do Cogumelo
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Watch Russian military tanks maneuvering as if they were dancing, as they perform in a precision drill called The Invincible and the Legendary.
Andrei Melanyin, seated with his legs crossed, watches the tanks practice from inside a beige tent in the bleachers. As the director of The Invincible and the Legendary, he’s looking for mistakes with a practiced eye. Melanyin is the head of the State Academic Bolshoi Theater of Russia, which includes the world-famous Bolshoi Theater, and a professor at the Institute of Modern Art. “They asked me to come in and do something theatrical,” he says of the government organizers of the event. “They wanted something more than just a technical demonstration.” The show he produced skips like a fake gemstone across Russian history, from the violent founding of the nation out of the Kiev city-state in the 12th century to demonstrations of hand-to-hand combat, set to the music of Ravel’s Bolero, by modern paratroopers. The program also includes a reenactment of a raid on a terrorist camp by attack helicopters, a display by combat dogs and a parade of heavy vehicles running obstacles. And the tanks—not just jumping ramps, but choreographed in a synchronized dance routine.
It’s part of the Russian Arms Expo going on this week. Read more about the tank ballet at Popular Mechanics. Link -via Boing Boing
Comments Off Ross Butter has a fine grasp of an odd idea. His explanation: “I got in touch with my inner child. He made me do this.” -via Buzzfeed
When is a video not a video? Some consider Vaslav Nijinsky the greatest ballet dancer ever, but there is no known film footage of Nijinsky, who retired at age 29 in 1919. He would not allow his company to be filmed. However, YouTube has Nijinsky dance videos. How can that be?
Because, it turns out, these aren’t films. They are computer-generated artifacts, made by Christian Comte, a French artist who has a studio in Cannes. Reached the other day, Comte acknowledged his authorship. “These films are animations of photographs, achieved thanks to a process that I invented,” he said. “I work as an alchemist in animated cinema.” He uses still photographs and, by employing a computer to alter them—tilt a head, move an arm—fills in the gaps between successive shots. That’s why his “Faun” footage is so much longer than his other footage. He had all those de Meyer stills. This is basically no different from the way Steven Spielberg got the dinosaurs to run around the jungle in “Jurassic Park.”
Link -via Boing Boing
