[Music] like hieroglyphs from an extinct civilization these pictures of a vanished ballet have never lost their fascination on May 29th 1913 in Paris the curtain went up on the stock to plant on the Rite of Spring with choreography by the Russian dancer Vaslav Nijinsky designs by the Russian painter Nicolas Rorick and music by the Russian composer Igor Stravinsky the riot that greeted the ballet on its opening night became a legend and although the choreography soon disappeared the music enjoyed a new century was underway and in Paris the mood was one of infectious enthusiasm women hurried to keep pace with changing fashions great strides were being made in science and engineering meanwhile new kinds of dancing have begun to draw a broad audience ballet had been left behind in nineteen six all Paris was talking about an exhibition of Russian paintings of the Grand Palais organized by the Russian impresario Sergei dragonov the following season he introduced audiences to the Russian opera and in nineteen nine he returned for the company of dancers his Ballet Russe conquer over the course the next 20 years diarga death gathered around him choreographers composers and painters we go down in history as the greatest of their time in Stravinsky yagi life found a promising young composer and higher than provide for the badly his scores for Firebird and petrushka instantly made him the most famous composer of his generation in Nijinsky Jaganath had a great artist and a star attraction among eight admirers was Mary ROM there who assisted Nijinsky during the making of the Rite of Spring and danced in the ballet herself and indeed I could say that when he danced Spectre he was a very perfume of the rose because in everything he extracted the essence in steel feed he was the very soul of Japan in Africa he was not the pain of every man weighted down by faith the jet skis ambitions went beyond performing he wanted to choreograph valleys of a break new ground Yaga left encouraged him Nijinsky is first ballet the afternoon of faun in 1912 scandalized the audience with an ending that was sexually explicit some French critics accused of ignoring subtleties of Claude Debussy's music others however admired the ballet for its stock originality but their position was that defeat both fatherland were going in one direction and the body was facing the audience and the arms were facing the audience he walked on one line [Music] with sure his second ballet Nijinsky established himself as a choreographer who was leading the way into the future sure was the first ballet in modern dress and it was based on a post-freudian love triangle I thought I was deeply interested in his heart and i had marred it and so on I knew and everybody in the company knew that he lived with died he left was homosexual and so that I sort of prevented myself from being in love with him after fawn giaggi life had begun laying groundwork for new ballet proposed by Nicolas roaring renowned russian painter and archaeologist whose art reflected his avid interest in primitive cultures later Stravinsky recalled having a similar idea I had dreamed the scene of pagan ritual in which a chosen sacrifice of virgin dances herself to death reaching Switzerland in the fall I rented a house in clarin for my family and began to work I put the piano on this wall I bought from the beginning of the day to the end of the day they continued to work after the dinner and I was very very touched I went to bed and I remember his sleep very well and I put hundred dollars it is here in French I am composing the faculty Fran Tom and I fight Igor Stravinsky like [Music] but rather new court you know eighth-notes court that the acids they're even more you and absence they're really the foundation of the whole thing when I finish comfort in the Rite of Spring I played it for dengue live and I started to play this ecology fifty nine times the same part they did have was a little bit surprised he didn't want to offend me he asked me only one see which was very offended as we read it lasts a very long time this way and I said to the end my dear and he was silent because he understood I'm service serious in search of someone who could help Nijinsky and the dancers with Stravinsky score Yaga laughs visited the studio of amel jogged out crows who devised a method of translating musical rhythms into movement called your rythmics Dalcroze star pupil Mary rambha was hired and for a company who was used to run that temple of course it was awfully difficult and they hated it heartily they made my rehearsals very difficult and Stravinsky arrived she said this is not at all the temple this has got to be quicker this has got to be slower nuisance he said this can't be quicker and this can't be slow I know about the dancers can do there was an epic battle between them Stravinsky sat at the piano and trying to make an orchestra he stamped with his feet and then with his hands from the piano here and there and shouted and sang and so on and you know I can't remember who won is well over half a cent go in a theater that had been awash in pastels diarga lofts ballets burst onto the stage Paris audiences were captivated by a Russia they imagined to be a land of vivid splendor and noble savagery the exotic is Olympia argue laughs introduced to assume the height of fashion in Paris society looked to the Ballet Russe as the epitome of style expectations for Nijinsky 's new ballet were running high so were tensions between Gabriele Ostrom the impresario of the new TR traditional is a and his audience who found his programming too progressive there had even been complaints about the new theater later featured in Marcela of EA's 1924 film Linea man the architecture was considered too Germanic not suitably French in style on May 29th 1913 in the middle of an unseasonable heatwave the Rite of Spring opened at the performance mild protests against a music would be heard from the beginning then then the curtain opened the storm broke it was terribly difficult to hear the orchestra because of all that noise in the audience I left the whole image and I remember slamming of door I have never again been that angry dreadful rah one woman bent out of a box and slapped a man who was backstage in the fury there is so negative switching the house lights on and off in the hope that this mic finds a hole then when somebody called the hope you seem to be obstructed there damages for the rest of the performance I stood in the wings behind the scenes' key and holding his jacket while he stood on the chair shouting numbers those are dancers when it was all over the curtain came down yusin's he came down from where he stood because he stood on a chair in the wings you know him and said do república means public fool of the public it is the reviews ranged from baffles to irate we only gave four performances and then we came to London where it made no effect whatsoever and that mostly life of that family the Rite of Spring was the climax of nezhinski's career as a choreographer which was soon aborting on the company's South American tour later that season Nijinsky married rahman irr Topolsky the wife of the conductor came in and said news wonderful news Ramallah in ratzlaf are engaged and I bent down I had the trunk under the thing and pretended to ramage in it and hot tears are streaming from my eyes I then realized that was desperately in love with him which I never realized and that evening I went on thinking I don't like the crowds sheep or what but huge wind was blowing and I bent down and was hoping hoping hoping that the waves would swallow the agya left dismissed Nijinsky over the course of the next few years he grew increasingly unstable and as his condition declined he was diagnosed as schizophrenic and was hospitalized in Switzerland where he lived out his remaining years until his death in 1950 in the meantime Rorick had continued designing for the stage founded a school in New York and eventually settled in the Himalayas where his paintings became more preoccupied with religious imagery Stravinsky too had moved on but his score for the Rite of Spring had taken on a life of its own in the concert hall where it was promptly recognized as modern masterpiece I must guided by no system but ever in the second tier anthem I had only my ear to help me I heard and I wrote what I heard I am the vessel through which the circle passes though the score has since been tackled by many other choreographers poor vision skis version lived on in the memories of witnesses in 70 planta Newsham ski was bent on three producing every note of the music in the end I think he was right because the music was so powerful and its rhythmic impact so tremendous that when it was all done by a company of Eclipse and dancers as they were that practically doubled the impact of what Stravinsky already years later ROM bear founded her own company among the choreographers who worked for her was a young American by the name of Robert Joffrey in 1955 when I was 24 years old I was invited to go to London the stage valleys for the velodrome here I used to ask her all about medinsky in my eyes he was a great dancer that I had never seen and I think it's amazing is here you have this great dancer with enormous facility for classical and when he choreographed it didn't use that but I'm sure without the encouragement of the author behind him telling him to go on do what you want to do you know make a mistake but do it and I think that that help is what encourages me to do something was so unique and so different for its time inspired by giaggi lives exam Joffre created a company of his own and over the years he acknowledged his debt by reviving important valleys of the Jia Jia era nearly 60 years after the Rite of Spring opened Millicent Hudson a young American graduate student got interested in Nijinsky ballet now remember this was 1971 I was so struck by the contemporary look of the dancers in sauk the headbands the braids and the hand-painted costumes also the way the feet turned in and the the vulnerability of the posture was something that in fashion photography right then was very popular and I started thinking about why did someone make a dance like this in 1913 Hudson met Robert Jeffery and discovered that he shared her interest in the Rite of Spring because Robert had been in England with rum bear in the 50s had seen her demonstrate some of the movement and so perhaps for this reason more than anyone else he believed in the possibility of recovering this work with the exception of Mary ROM bear all of the people instrumental in creating the Rite of Spring were dead when Hanson began her research even if many dancers had survived from the production no one else knew every step of the belly but rum bear both for Robert Joffrey and her kitchen and for me and her parlor later 15 years difference in that time she would sing parts of the music and this was quite wonderful because you knew exactly where she was talking about in the choreography a rehearsal score that ROM bear had notated herself soon after the ballets premiere was the only surviving record of nezhinski's choreography I went to her and asked for it and she had lost it the original she had sold to make money for her company but somewhere in her house she said was a copy that she had not been able to find early in the research process I began working here in London with the materials of the theatre museum which includes a collection of drawings by Valentin gross Valentin gross like many other young artists in Paris went to the premiere to see the ballet and she seems to have not plan to record this dance posterity but once she started it seemed obsessive that she realized she had to finish when I talked with ROM berry she was telling me now don't leave those nice ones those showed Valentin gross in her admiration for Isadora Duncan the little drawings the fast ones that that Valentin gross did in the theatre like not even looking just drawing not looking they have this kind of wooden quality and this was what rambha said she said be blunt you know use that wooden quality if that's what it really was in the course of her research Hudson met Kenneth Archer whom she later married an art historian and an authority on Nicholas Florrick he shared her conviction that sock could be revived and embarked on his own research to recover Rourke's designs and to explore the attitude of the Russians toward their own past they felt that Russia had gone too far into being influenced by the Europeans by the French in particular and so they wanted to look back into their their own roots so Rourke was part of that movement Varick was it a good one might say to Nijinsky he was taken with bricks a historical approach and Rorick had told him about the ancient Slavs and their rituals and he was very impatient to get various designs and costumes before he would start he wouldn't start the choreography until he had these well we've researched for saw in quite a number of places in in five countries in in three continents in London we worked at the theater museum that was the most important the collection there also in New York the Nicholas ray museum and in ioke the Castle Howard costume galleries which for both of us actually was very important in the work of Castle Howard because we could have so much immediate contact with the material and with the costumes that accessories and so on I'm trying to see if there's another line in there it's just gotten Freda doubters that just I guess that's just the bottom line of the squares I managed to find 80% of the costumes and a good number the accessory there are designs on the costumes actual shapes circles within circles squares diagonal crossings crossbone effects that you can actually see in the ground patterns of the choreography as regards the date cause they what I had to do is to find her exhibiting all designs the first one was the easiest because there was a reproduction in the magazine that was in black and white and I had all the the verbal evidence from me the critics at the time and I took color from her eggs other variants and some of his staff paintings they ate it at the same time now about act 2 it was much more difficult because I couldn't find a very visual but I did find in this museum he's 1930 backdrop in which he'd synthesized the two sets for act 1 and 2 in 1913 so one of the ways I work was deconstructing that taking away the young elements I knew from the first act and what remained was helpful for the second act as the next step in the reconstruction Hudson and Archer organized the information they had gathered in notebooks that would serve as blueprints his for supervising the execution of the costumes and sets hers for staging the dance I kept them in different forms over all the years I was working and essentially filled in the blanks I would have the layering on of what Stravinsky had said in his notes about that moment in the music what ROM bear had said what I knew from the critics what I knew from any of the memoirs of the dancers that they had written and also visually what in relation to those few measures could I prove from visual sources then I had my own drawings that interpreted the verbal material five years after Hudson started working in earnest ROM bare score resurfaced when she died her archivist found in the bedroom wardrobe at the very bottom this a score that she had notated I don't think that had I found it in 1979 when I first asked her for it that I could have done with it what I could do in 1984 because not having it forced me to go all around it and having it then gave me the confirmations and the directions that I needed to finish Geoffrey's experience with reconstruction and his eye for detail informed the process he would ask you questions in this sense it was as though he had the the capacities of a very great teacher I think in that sense that he wasn't asking for things for himself he was asking not even for his company he's asking them for dance what you bun do if there's a if there's a cat if there's a costume missing or if there's a piece missing in the choreography and he said well you have two points that the points which you've established from the evidence that you have you just find the shortest line between the two and Bridget in a style which is in harmony with every other piece of material that you had despite my hundreds of drawings of hundreds of figures finally on the human bodies in action these details had to be made live and in this the dancers worked with me very closely I mean I completed the reconstruction on them and with them in the rehearsal studio and this drawing reminds me of an anecdote with Robert Jeffery when he came to a rehearsal late in the process he saw this one moment and he stood up he said storks and we all looked at him historic and he said that's what she called it rum Barre when there were three women come very tall on three-quarter points their arms very flat to the audience he said they called the three women storks because this movement they picked their way across the stage for the dancers it was the most amazing moment probably of the reconstruction because they saw the historical process they saw Robert Jeffery remembering what Marie remnar had told him in 1955 that was directly related to that instant of music Geoffrey's involvement in rehearsals was eventually curtailed by serious illness and he died six months after his efforts to bring the Rite of Spring back to the stage finally succeeded the actual event of the ballet that gives meaning to the whole thing is this question of sacrifice and the idea is that there is this marriage between a member of this ancient tribe and the Sun God that the young woman dances in order to save the earth I don't see it as a primitive and brutal thing that this woman dances herself to death I see it as an expression of of faith that human activity can have that impact on September 30th 1987 the curtain went up on the reconstituted Rite of Spring ironically given its history it was the hit of the Joffrey season but the myth that surrounded this ballet is now in shrouded in a new set of questions is any evidence however complete sufficient basis for assuming a dance that's been dead for over half a century is this or isn't it the ballet Nijinsky choreographed the controversy continues [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music]