Niloufar Talebi

Author * Producer * Educator * Creator *

Title and idea inspired by Holy or Sacred Spring / Le Sacre du Printemps/ The Rite of Spring: Pictures of Pagan Russia (1913) by Russian composer Igor Stravinsky (1882–1971)

A ballet and orchestral concert work written for the 1913 Paris season of Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes company; the original choreography was by Vaslav Nijinsky with stage designs and costumes by Nicholas Roerich. When first performed at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées on 29 May 1913, the avant-garde nature of the music and choreography caused a “riot”.

Described as "a musical-choreographic work, representing pagan Russia ... unified by a single idea: the mystery and great surge of the creative power of Spring". Episodes are:

Part I: L'Adoration de la Terre (Adoration of the Earth)

Introduction
Augurs of Spring — The celebration of spring begins in the hills. An old woman enters and begins to foretell the future
Ritual of Abduction — Young girls arrive from the river, in single file. They begin the "Dance of the Abduction"
Spring Rounds — The young girls dance the Khorovod, the "Spring Rounds"
Ritual of the Rival Tribes — The people divide into two groups in opposition to each other, and begin the "Ritual of the Rival Tribes"
Procession of the Sage: The Sage — A holy procession > entry of the wise elders headed by the Sage who brings the games to a pause and blesses the earth
Dance of the Earth — The people break into a passionate dance, sanctifying and becoming one with the earth

Part II: Le Sacrifice (The Sacrifice)

Mystic Circles of the Young Girls — The young girls engage in mysterious games, walking in circles
Glorification of the Chosen One — One of the young girls is selected by fate, being twice caught in the perpetual circle, and is honored as the "Chosen One" with a martial dance
Evocation of the Ancestors — In a brief dance, the young girls invoke the ancestors
Ritual Action of the Ancestors — The Chosen One is entrusted to the care of the old wise men
Sacrificial Dance — The Chosen One dances to death in the presence of the old men, in the great "Sacrificial Dance”

THE ORIGIN OF THESE SCARED RITES: contradictory genesis, could have been poetry that contains the same elements, or the pagan idea coming later. But in his 1936 autobiography, Stravinsky described the origin of the work thus: "One day [in 1910], when I was finishing the last pages of L'Oiseau de Feu (Firebird) in Saint Petersburg, I had a fleeting vision ... I saw in my imagination a solemn pagan rite: sage elders, seated in a circle, watching a young girl dance herself to death. They were sacrificing her to propitiate the god of Spring. Such was the theme of the Sacre du Printemps."

DESIGN BY Nicholas Roerich, the foremost Russian expert on folk art and ancient rituals. COSTUMES: native from Uzbekistan.