The Rite of Spring

[ecosophia]

A couple of nights ago I ended up watching a YouTube version of the Joffrey Ballet's 1987 performance of The Rite of Spring -- the first one since the ballet first premiered that presented it as it was originally designed, choreographed, and produced. (Why was I watching The Rite of Spring? Long story, having to do with a novel I've got in process.)

It was enormously controversial when it first appeared. There was a bona fide riot in the audience on the opening night -- forty people had to be expelled from the theater, some in hysterics -- and the choreographer, Vaslav Nijinsky, went stark staring crazy afterwards and spent the rest of his life in an asylum gazing blankly at the wall. If this reminds any of my readers of the fictional play The King in Yellow, well, let's just say the similarity has been noticed. (Yes, that was a central part of why I was watching it; Brecken Kendall, the aspiring young retro-Baroque composer who's the viewpoint character of the novel in question, is writing a chamber opera based on The King in Yellow...) 

So I watched it.  Yes, I know, I don't usually spend time staring at jerky little colored shapes on glass screens, but I make exceptions at long intervals and this was one of them. 

Now here's the thing: I don't get ballet or modern dance. It's not that I don't like them; it's that they communicate nothing to me. Watching a ballet, for me, is like listening to a lecture in Swahili or trying to read a newspaper in Tagalog; it's clear to me that there's something going on that communicates to other people, but I don't speak the language. As a child I went dutifully to The Nutcracker over the winter holidays and took in several other ballets -- the district where I went to school used to take busloads of kids to the Seattle Center a couple of times a year to take in a play or a ballet or some other bit of culture -- so it's not a matter of unfamiliarity; whatever one is supposed to get from watching ballet dancers dance, I don't. I'd assumed for years that some aspect of my Aspergers syndrome left me with the equivalent of tone-deafness to dance performance. 

And then I watched The Rite of Spring, and it actually made sense to me. I opened up that Tagalog newspaper and all of a sudden was looking at a page in a language I could read. Not only that, it was a potent and moving aesthetic experience. 

I really have no idea what to make of this, other than to wonder what it says about me that the only dance performance that's ever made sense to me is one that put its choreographer in an insane asylum and caused a cultured and tolerant Parisian audience to go into total meltdown...

Comments

I could be wrong

[degringolade]

But I think that Pablo Picasso was the set designer.

Re: I could be wrong

[(Anonymous)]

Yes, he was. The audience applauded his curtain, but booed the show.

Kevin

Re: I could be wrong

[ecosophia]

Hmm! I thought that Nicholas Roerich was the set designer for the original production -- that's what Wikipedia says, at least.

Curious

[(Anonymous)]

Ballet kinda leaves me cold too, especially modern dance. The technique is impressive, sometimes I perceive beauty, but it seldom really moves me.

But about 18 months ago while noodling around on youtube I stumbled on a performance by a young flamenco dancer. Expecting to be pleasantly entertained, I was astounded by the power and passion of his performance. It was stupendous! I’ve since become something of an aficionado.

So maybe it isn’t dance per se that leaves you unaffected, but certain forms of it. When another form comes along whose existence you hardly suspected, it turns out to be something else altogether, that speaks to you directly. A different kind of tempo, a different lexicon of movement, another sense of the body, and it’s another art form altogether.

I hope your protagonists doesn’t participate in a production of The King In Yellow. They say it’s even worse than the Scottish play.

Kevin

Re: Curious

[ecosophia]

Until this, it's been every form of dance I've watched. I'd put it down to some of the side effects of Aspergers syndrome -- those of us with AS lack the neurological structures that mimic other people's emotions (the so-called "mirror neurons"), and I'd assumed that dance performances were supposed to set those off, producing the aesthetic experience of dance. I'm not sure what to think now.

With regard to The King in Yellow, the whole concept of my para-Lovecraftian fiction is that Lovecraft got his facts right but his values backwards. Yes, of course humanity is a pipsqueak in the middle of infinities, of no importance to the rest of the cosmos; yes, of course the world is ruled by vast nonhuman powers whose concern with us is on a par with our concern for dust mites; yes, of course the human notion that the universe ought to obey our notions of reason and logic is exactly the kind of charming, childish delusion you'd expect from beings with our decidedly limited intelligence and maturity -- and that's wonderful, not terrifying!

When you turn the pages of the Necronomicon or one of the other eldritch tomes, in my fictive cosmos, what happens is that you go sane -- you realize the points just made and others like them. Of course if you've built your life on the delusion that the universe is supposed to pander to our species' overdeveloped sense of entitlement, that's a real shock, and it can leave you gibbering in a madhouse -- but for my characters, it's much more likely to produce the same immense sense of relief that the same realization produced in me.

So, yes, the characters in the novel in question are involved in a production of The King in Yellow. I've mentioned the novel The Shoggoth Concerto, which takes place in the same fictive cosmos as The Weird of Hali but isn't part of the same narrative arc; this is the sequel, The Nyogtha Variations, and the main character -- aspiring young composer Brecken Kendall, now settled in Arkham -- will be composing and then helping to produce an operatic version, using the (fictional) Oscar Wilde translation of Castaigne's original play as the libretto. So I'm busy studying Baroque opera (since Brecken is a retro-Baroque composer), and the neglected genre of chamber opera, and everything having to do with The King in Yellow -- and that's what led me to The Rite of Spring.

[(Anonymous)]

You're not the only one with that question now....

For what it's worth, I've also got Asperger's, but that somehow makes it worse: what does it mean that an aesthetic experience that we can enjoy drives people without Asperger's insane?

[ecosophia]

Well, it apparently doesn't drive them insane any more -- the Joffrey production was apparently well received. So maybe we're just naturally ahead of the curve!

Dance

[(Anonymous)]

In my opinion, it not a matter of you not being able to understand the language of dance. Most dances and dancers are all about showing up what they can do instead of using their art to really tell a story. Personally I have seen dozens of dancers performing Swan Lake and only felt any kind of emotion when I saw it performed by a Brazilian street dancer, Mr. John Lennon da Silva. Hell, I watched his performance and I could see the bloody bird dying and agonizing. He was not just performing technically difficult moves, he performed those moves to really tell a story.
One of these days, when you're in the mood, perhaps you can check that performance. it starts at 1m 47 s.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KGN6oQmhKck

Re: Dance

[ecosophia]

Hmm -- I suppose that's a possibility. I tend to assume that if I don't get something, it's a matter of me not getting it rather than the composer not communicating it, but there are exceptions to that rule. I'll check out the performance when I have time.

[neonvincent]

Well, it is a depiction of a pagan religious festival celebrating the power of Nature. That would be the kind of thing that might appeal to a Druid.

[ecosophia]

No doubt. On the other hand, a while back a modern dance troupe did a piece, Rise and Fall, which was explicitly inspired by my book The Long Descent (and credited the book on the program). I'm told by people I know who are into dance that it was really good, and you have to admit that the subject matter wasn't exactly likely to alienate me -- and yet I had the same reaction to it as to other dance performances.

[(Anonymous)]

I love Rite of Spring, have often listened to the music alone, saw it as a very minimalistic modern performance live in Leipzig and also (partially) with more traditional costumes, though I am not sure if it was the original costumes and choreography. Don't get at all why the original audience rioted... But I'm not much into ballet either, usually.

[auntlili]

A) I'm happy for you! B) I'm not surprised you understood it. Most ballets have a plot, which is not irrelevant but lets say incidental. The plot is like a mannequin holding up a beautiful gown. The Nutcracker is a perfect example. The first half sets you up by taking you to a ball with a great big tree, a dodgy uncle and later on, some rodents. The second half is a fever dream about sweets. It's not really narrative but evocative. And in that case the thing being evoked is not something that apparently interests you much.

The Rite of Spring is another beast altogether. It isn't meant to be evocative -- to transport your emotions or create a mood -- but invocative -- to call up something or someone. In a sense, it's not written for the audience at all but for the Spring or for the earth. It's a rite, a ritual, or put another way, a spell, which is pretty well your line of country, no? And so it makes sense that an audience accustomed to having its mood ushered toward the sublime, the ecstatic, or in the case of the Nutcracker, the confectionery, would be put out to find themselves watching a vigorous and not especially "aesthetic" conjuring in which they have no apparent part.

[ecosophia]

I'm sure that was part of it, but I'm not sure that was all of it; as I noted in response to NeonVincent above, I've seen other dance works that were very much my cup of tea in terms of the story they told. But I'm still very much in process in terms of making sense of the experience.

Awesome

[(Anonymous)]

John, that post really spoke to me! I love noticing the little things I see everyday, but for the first time (like the little tree on the side of the road, or the way the branches of my sycamore tree intertwine). Things like that, or suddenly understanding a piece of art make me excited to always see what's around that corner up ahead.

Thanks for Posting!

~Steve

Dance

[(Anonymous)]

Ah, Nijinski, one of the idols of my younger years. I was a dancer from the time I first started walking and this has had a profound and enduring effect on the trajectory of my entire life. I would agree with NeonVincent that your understanding of The Rite of Spring might derive from the subject matter of the ballet--a pagan festival celebrating Nature. It might also derive from the fact that the choreography was a distinct break from traditional ballet movements of the time as was the score by Stravinski. Also, Nijinski was not committed to an asylum until about six years later and continued to dance after the 1913 debut of the Rite of Spring. It was likely not just the Rite of Spring that caused his mental deterioration. He was a fascinating and incredibly talented man, a true genius, with a sensibility out of step with the times he was born into.
As for dance itself, I have always thought that the understanding and power of dance resides more in the performance and actual physical experience of it, much less so in the observation and critique, especially in the concert setting with the audience seated primly in chairs.
I suspect that a broader definition of dance would encompass many of the movements and choreography of Druidic rituals (although my studies of Druid rituals are in their infancy) and perhaps this is what you were able to relate to in the viewing of the Rite of Spring.

Re: Dance

[ecosophia]

I know a Druid who's very interested in bringing elements from turn-of-the-(last)-century dance into Druid ritual, but most of the traditions that come down to us from the older Druid Revival scene are much more like Masonic ceremonies than like dance!

oops, forgot to sign

[(Anonymous)]

The recent comment regarding Nijinski and Dance was from
Yanocoches in Colorado

Is it the music?

[(Anonymous)]

Fascinating observation, JMG! I am a lover of dance in general, but most Western styles of dance – and especially ballet – leave me cold. For me, I think it is that Western music sacrificed rhythm in order to focus on polyphony back in the late medieval times. And I don’t think one can divorce dance from the music.

And, for me, that’s where the Rite of Spring rocks! I suspect that the “refined” Parisian upper-crust were horrified by hearing the raw, powerful rhythms of Igor Stravinski – and seeing the dancers’ vivid portrayals of those rhythms – after centuries of repression. If I recall correctly, the London concert-goers were horrified by the raw power and dissonance portrayed in the first movement (Mars) of Gustav Holst’s The Planets (in late 1918 – appropriately enough, while WWI was still going on). To put things in perspective, I don’t believe there was a single Western classical composition that portrayed as strong an emotion as anger before good old Beethoven’s 5th Symphony (composed in the early 19th century). Poor little Western “snowflakes”!

I’d be interested to know if you think that the music might have been a “code-breaker” for you while watching the Rite of Spring.

Re: Is it the music?

[ecosophia]

No, it's not the music; I enjoy Stravinsky a great deal -- he's one of the few postclassical composers I really like -- but other works of his haven't had the same effect. As for the snowflakery of Western music, my take on the classical and Baroque eras is rather different. Those were written in a historical period when raw power and dissonance were all over everyday life, and people turned to music to reaffirm their hope that there was an order to the cosmos that made sense of the chaos and bloodshed. Think of Renaissance music, so elegant and formal, and then think of the raw power and dissonance of life in the brawling, bloodstained free-for-all of Renaissance Italy!

William Butler Yeats has a fascinating essay where he argues that each work of creative art is the artist's attempt to achieve his or her utter opposite. That's true of historical periods, I think, as well as individual artists. People in a ruthless, dissonant, brutal age like art that's very formal, polite, and ordered; when we reach an age where everything has been force-fitted into a Procrustean bed of calm clean civility, then people long for art that's dissonant, primal, and harsh.

[(Anonymous)]

Something of an echo of an earlier comment, but why did the audience reject the performance to such a degree?

--David, by the lake

[ecosophia]

I've read a number of essays by modern critics scratching their heads in puzzlement over that question.

[(Anonymous)]

It's a wonderful ballet! One possibility for why dance has left you cold until now is that you may not have seen really excellent, artistic performances, and this one that you saw was that. About Nijinsky: it wasn't like he went crazy right after the performance of The Rite of Spring (in 1913). Not long after that he had many traumatic events in his life. His mental stability began to decline, and he entered an asylum in 1917. He was diagnosed with schizophrenia, and was in and out of asylums for the rest of his life.

[ecosophia]

Obviously I'm no judge, but certainly I've seen performances that people who are into dance considered very good, so I'm not sure it was that.

Dance Appreciation

[(Anonymous)]

I was taught that watching dance sets off what we called the "kinesthetic sense," watching movement produces the feelings of those same movements in the observer's body.
Be that as it may, perhaps your ability to appreciate The Rite of Spring was nothing less than a brief visit, a touch, from Terpsichore.
Yanocoches in Colorado

Re: Dance Appreciation

[ecosophia]

That was my understanding -- and that kinesthetic sense depends on the mirror neurons that people with Aspergers don't have. That's why my experience with The Rite of Spring rattled me the way it did.

[(Anonymous)]

The Rite of Spring was more recently presented with the jazz group The Bad Plus providing the music. I’ve enjoyed the album that was released from it. It received some critical praise as well.

Flame in Bloom

[(Anonymous)]

I'm a choreographer, and I find it's very hard for most people to understand dance. What I always say is that for people without a particular education in or preference for dance, watching it is like trying to see something in a window that's too high, and people need a stepstool. I usually try to provide them in my pieces through props, music, and titles, but of course what works for one audience member might not work for another. It sounds like in this case, your interest in the material and some other, less tangible elements of the performance finally got you a stepstool that you don't have when you watch other pieces.

Also I don't really "get" music. (I know, I hear all the time how crazy that is for a choreographer, but I'm not alone, and I think it just gives me a different perspective on the art form.) Which isn't to say I've never had an emotional experience listening to music, but that's usually because I relate to the lyrics or something. I think some art forms just do or don't speak to specific people in general, but it doesn't preclude you from finding a particular instance that speaks your language.

Re: Flame in Bloom

[ecosophia]

One thing I've noticed very commonly about most modern art forms is that artists very often go out of their way to do things that don't communicate to anybody but the cognoscenti -- it's a kind of snobbery, really, and to my mind harmful to the arts as well as to people in general. Do you think something like this is at work in modern dance?

Dance as advertising?

[(Anonymous)]

I read, somewhere, that there was at least some version of public dance performance which was basically a front for prostitution. Lower-class men hired prostitutes; upper-class men patronized the ballet (and enjoyed the company of a dancer or two, in a somewhat less transactional way). From what I've been hearing lately about powerful men behaving badly in the arts and media world, it may still be going on... but no one told the women that they'd have to perform off-stage as well as on-stage.

So, if you're not interested in the product, maybe it's appropriate that you don't enjoy the ads, and you don't nod and smile to follow the crowd. You and me, both.

DE Lathechuck

Re: Dance as advertising?

[ecosophia]

Hmm. You're right that I'm not in the market for the product, but that angle hadn't occurred to me.

[(Anonymous)]

John, what happens when YOU dance? Do you feel any different?

[ecosophia]

I find dancing stressful and unpleasant. One of the things tangled up in my Aspergers syndrome -- it's a fairly common complication of AS -- is what neurologists call dyspraxia and everyone else calls being really, really klutzy. Dancing for me is a constant struggle to try to do a complicated set of movements faster than my nervous system will permit, with the added hassle of trying to match movements with a partner -- something that nobody with AS does at all well -- and, in a social setting, the constant awareness that I'm being judged and found wanting -- something that happens to people with AS a lot, and thus something that's a sore spot with most of us. So what I feel when I dance -- which I haven't done for a good many decades -- is the kind of bleak mood I get when I know I'm going to fail at something and have to do it anyway, overlaid with desperate concentration on detail in an attempt not to fail too disastrously this once.

[(Anonymous)]

You didn’t mention further testing. Maybe Asperger’s was a hurdle overcome by allegro itellectus?

~j8sun

[ecosophia]

I didn't get diagnosed until I was nearly forty; Aspergers was basically not recognized when I was a kid. These days I have what's technically known as ARA, Adult Residual Aspergers -- meaning basically that the core dysfunctions are still there, but I've worked out a solid toolkit of coping mechanisms, and other parts of my brain have developed workarounds to pick up some of the slack. I haven't overcome it -- it's hardwired in -- but I've learned to get along with it tolerably well.

Rites of Spring

[(Anonymous)]

Modris Ekstein wrote a fascinating book connecting the play with the subsequent wars of the modern age https://www.amazon.ca/Rites-Spring-Great-Birth-Modern/dp/0307361764/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1518836260&sr=8-1&keywords=rites+of+spring

RaymondR

Re: Rites of Spring

[ecosophia]

Hmm! Most interesting. I'll see if the local library has a copy.

Dunno

[ferngladefarm.blogspot.com.au]

Hi John Michael,

Your Asperger’s is a gift and you see the world differently from other people. It is a very useful gift too and it provides you with useful insights and you get to peek behind the veneer of the curtain that society puts over the grubby realities. And even better, you get to make sense of all the noise and the attempts at chicanery and have the focus to follow your convictions through. Many, many people lack that clarity and force of personality.

On the other hand, maybe you're just not that into dance as a mode of communication? But perhaps this work was different enough that it spoke to you? That happens to me, and not every author strikes a note, and communication in dance would not be a single coherent form so it is a similar situation.

I see the world slightly differently again to you and it appears to me as a series of continuous many layered stories which can sometimes open up and grow or retract – that is if I choose to peek or am pointed in a direction. And dance as a form of communication leaves me feeling like rushing for the exits, and not in hysteria either, but more because life is short and there are other things to do that have greater meaning to me.

You've asked an extraordinarily complex question as it gets to the roots of how we as individuals interpret and relate to the world around us. I suspect that few people have clarity of thought on that matter.

Cheers

Chris

[(Anonymous)]

I seem to recollect from music history, nearly two decades ago, that the audience for The Rite of Spring went wanting to be shocked and horrified. They were, basically, their version of the modern upstanding urban Democrat appalled that there are *gasp* Trump voters *internet vapors* out there among the despicable and unwashed masses. Er, flyover country. Whichever.
They got what they wanted and reacted as they wished to.

Musicians are prone to mental illness, as described by the psychologists, more, we're prone to refuse treatment for mental illness as it turns off the creative functions. I don't know why that wouldn't apply to dancers. I've heard it does to artists. I'll have to ask my sons' ballet teachers. I suppose dancers have whatever protective mechanisms come from physical exertion. But if you want really institutionalize this person levels of insanity, read composer bios-not the whitewashed for children kind, but the in-depth kind.
It's one of the things that urges caution to me: Composer? Yes. Occultist? Yes. Crazy? Absolutely. Maybe there's a reality filter that doesn't work in composers. So I proceed with magic with great caution.

BoysMom

[ecosophia]

Hah! That would make sense of the reaction of the audience, no question. One thing, though -- occultists don't tend to go crazy any more often than the general public, and I've seen some cases (and read about many more) of people who would otherwise probably been institutionalized, but who managed via occult practices to keep enough of a fingernail grip on reality to keep functioning in the everyday world. So your practice of occultism may actually help counterbalance any tendency toward instability that your music might otherwise foster!

Rite of Spring

[(Anonymous)]

John,
I am a former professional ballet dancer and I love the form, but I will tell you that I watch hundreds of dance works and feel nothing except a kind of perplexity. Often the compositional elements are there, the technique is at a professional level, the structure is solid, but it just doesn't speak. It just rambles on, a whole lot of wasted energy.
Similarly, growing up I always thought I hated jazz but found that there is just a very particular kind of jazz that I respond to. Same thing with Reggae, Opera, Black Metal, New Age.
When people ask me what kind of music I like, I tend to respond, "The good kind," but a more appropriate reply would simply be, "The kind that moves me."
Note, the Joffrey Rite of Spring is a reconstruction, not actually the original choreography. It is as close to it as they could get and they did it while some of the dancers who had been involved in the original were still alive, and with many original notes, etc. but many suppositions and inferences had to be made.
I wonder how the Pina Bausch/Tanztheatre Wuppertal version would suit you. To me, it is the most primal and visceral Rite of Spring out there. Not as famous as the lost Nijinsky, but for many the definitive version. It is also performed barefoot on a stage covered in actual earth.
About dancing, nearly all struggle with structured dance. It is why we repeat the exercises thousands and thousands of times,- to develop "muscle memory," a term perhaps you are familiar with. At that point the body goes through its routine while the consciousness can be used to infuse those movements with meaning and observe what is happening around it. That being said, it sounds to me that the most suitable form of dance for you would be unstructured, spontaneous improvisation to whatever accompaniment you choose. The key is to not force your body to do any kind of particular movement, but to let it move the way that it wishes and feels most comfortable. There are no rules for this kind of dance because it is personal.
Like you recently wrote about writing, to know the rules before you break them and to do so intentionally and for effect, my ballet teacher insisted that freedom would be found by mastering the rules. The techniques of dance are difficult and complex, and many performers are concentrating on the proper execution of the step rather than being so adept that the step becomes simply a means to an end- which is communicating the idea. Just like writing, once this hurdle has been past, the true "voice" emerges. Only when I see dancers who have crossed this threshold does the art form become compelling to me. This is also what may be the dividing line between a sublime ritual and the pompous or embarrassingly silly.- You had mentioned that sweet spot recently performed by the youth at the Mason Hall.
Anyway, long-time reader, big-time fan, first-time responder. Thank you for sharing.

Re: Rite of Spring

[ecosophia]

Thanks for this. Actually, one of the consequences of having Aspergers syndrome is that unstructured, spontaneous improvisation is something I can't do at all. My body doesn't move in response to music; it doesn't move at all, unless I tell it to. That's simply the way my nervous system is wired.

The one dancelike thing I've ever done that really worked for me is t'ai chi ch'uan, which is the opposite of unstructured and spontaneous. Imagine performing the same excruciatingly slow 20-minute dance once a day, with every movement down to finger positions tightly scripted, for the rest of your life: that's t'ai chi. It works for me. One of those things...