Le Sacre Du Printemps
Art is the opposite of chaos. Art is organised chaos.
~ Igor Stravinsky
Plot
Deep within the corners of the thawing Russian landscape, lives an ancient Pagan Tribe. Honouring the deal they made with the God of the Sun, Jarilla, they must sacrifice a virgin to the God in springtime, to keep their tribe alive and protect them from the seasons of scarcity.
The tribe wakes at dawn. In the hills, a wise old lady appears to foretell the future, as people scurry about, sanctifying and cleaning the mystic circles where the sacrifice is to be held.
The young girls and young sages enter in single files- walking with delicate, small steps, tiptoed. They begin the dance of abduction, with one sage kidnapping one girl, until every single virgin is captured.
The people split into two groups, and begin the Ritual of the Rival Tribes- a form of entertainment for the God, in the form of aggressive dances.
A wise old sage is led in through a slow, mysterious procession. Within a transcendental realm, his mind swirls and his emotions are not comprehensible to mortal humans. He leans down, supported by two young sages, and presses his ear to the earth. Blessing the earth, he stands up again.
Upon hearing the earth’s words, the people break into a frenzied, passionate dance. The dance represents the untrained joy and frenzy of the unaware of ‘standards’ of what dance is today. With nobody to correct them, each dances according to their will and ability. They become one with the earth; returning the human race to their primal origins.
Time passes. It is dusk. The young girls form mystical circles and engage in games of fate to decide the Chosen One. As their movement grows more fluent and hypnotising, the dusk’s light turns from purple to blue, and they begin to emit light.
The pattern of their movement changes. Each girl crosses to the front of the girl ahead of her, and as they keep on repeating the pattern, each panicks more and more. Each wishes, ideally, to not be the sacrificial virgin. But in their panic, they lose control over their movement.
A girl falls. She tries to stand up and join the circle again, but she is pushed inside. By being the first one to fall, she has become the Chosen One. In desperation, she stands up again, but she realises there is no choice- she is pushed into the centre of the circle several times, and she starts spinning- a symbol of submission.
The Chosen One straightens herself and stands in the perfect centre of the Circle. She has given up.
Poised still as an imposing rock, immortally at rest, unmoved by the tempest winds which were summoned by the mystical circles, her heart is in faith and hope.
The girls of the circle then perform a frenzied dance in duets and in trios, glorifying the Chosen One, for taking up her duty without resistance, for being bold as a Vulture, as a Hawk, a Leopard, as a Lynx. Then, in a brief ritual, they perform an invocations to the ancestors.
One by one, in a slow march from all sides, appear the ancestors. Following them are the 4 Hounds of Death. They perform a dance to honour and sanctify the virgin, to testify her purity and to purge her of her sins.
The ancestors, girls, and hounds of death form a large circle around the Chosen One. They slowly move out of the sanctified ground. The Hounds of Death return. 7 young sages and 6 hounds of death appear. They position themselves around the Girl, in layers.
Thus begins the final ritual- the Danse Sacrale. The girl begins a desperate and exhausting dance. While dancing, the sheer aggression of the dance causes her leg to break. She limps about. But the Hounds of Death restore the bone for her to continue dancing. She cowers, her eyes widened in horror, and her knees quivering from the fear. She tries to run away, but she knows she cannot escape. The tribe spurs on her dance. She thus gives up and surrenders completely, and dances, until she realises that her breath is run out. Continuing to dance, she lays down on the floor, and her head and leg raise up as the spirit passes upwards.
The Hounds of Death Jump forward and raise her above, displaying it to the Sun God, who reappears as the night passes.
Construction
Russia at the time was dominated by French culture. Languages, music, and customs were all French. However, Stravinsky, despite studying under the pioneers of the ‘Russian style’ of music, Korsakov, felt that the themes of the music were still not Russian. He felt that swans, lovers, and romance was not truly Russian, but another remnant of France.
Both Stravinsky, the composer and Nijinsky, the choreographer of the ballet, were in one mind about the ballet. That the dance and music should both represent the ‘real’ people of Russia- not French Aristocrats and lovers from mystical lands.
Thus, the music was made such as to represent the villager’s untrained voices and handmade instruments, but it had to be broadcasted through the highly refined modern orchestra.
By playing a bassoon above its highest register, it was made to sound exquisite and unlike anything that the classical world had ever heard. This also made it sound quite similar to the female voice. Adding in mordents and trills showed the untrained voices of these people- quivering, breathing, and full of what the elite would consider ‘mistakes’.
Nijinsky, too, choreographed not a ballet, but a folk dance, where people dance to their own will, with nobody to judge them, full of their emotion and full of their life. The dancers were instructed to jump with their toes curled inwards, deliberately break off from the rhythm. This is shown particularly in the ‘Dance of the Earth’.
First Performance and Reception
Stravinsky seems to have forgotten that the revolution was occurring in Russia and not in France. The main audience for ballet in France was among the elite conservatives. Moreover, there was no warning on the posters about the contents of the ballet, and the word ‘spring’ was an attractive one.
Therefore, when the performance took place, at the very first note of the ballet, where the bassoon plays its high solo, the audience stirred. People were confused as to which instrument it was, and slowly, the audience grew noisier. By the time the ballet began, the audience started hurling objects at the musicians and dancers. However, the conductor had been told to continue, no matter what happened. Nijinsky leaned over from the wings and had to shout out numbers for the dancers to stay generally to the rhythm, because the clamour the audience created deafened the dancers to the music.
Eventually, the police had to intervene and make arrests. But that was enough to scar Nijinsky and Stravinsky. The ballet was not performed again till 1987, where it was restored using the little scribbles on top of the manuscripts, archival data, and records of the dancers and audience who were still alive, by the Joffrey Ballet. The Joffrey Ballet’s performance is splendid. The dancers make the ballet rather scary to watch in the final scenes. The dancers were showing off their own rawness- for they were to become the template for newer dancers to copy. They had nobody to mimic.