Recommended Dance: THE RITE OF SPRING (World Premiere with Live Orchestra by Atlanta Ballet)

ATLANTA BALLET DOES THINGS RITE

One hundred and twelve years ago, a new ballet took place at Paris’s Théâtre des Champs-Élysées. This highly controversial work – for both its music and choreography – would revolutionize dance and thrust ballet and classical music into the modern era. As if the avant-garde nature of the dance was not enough to cause a near riot on opening night, the shocking music with its dissonance and irregular stresses and rhythms surely was. Le Sacre du Printemps (The Rite of Spring), which depicts a virgin sacrifice in an ancient pagan Russia – a maiden is chosen to die and must dance herself to death – was a collaborative project of three Russian artists: composer Igor Stravinsky, choreographer Vaslav Nijinsky, and designer Nicholas Roerich, an expert on folk art and ancient rituals.

The Rite of Spring has been reinvented various times throughout history to push boundaries and challenge the perceptions of contemporary audiences. Now, Atlanta Ballet takes the stage with its world premiere adaptation of The Rite of Spring February 7-14, 2025, at the Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre where Choreographer-in-Residence Claudia Schreier innovates the timeless and dynamic piece to transport audience members on an emotional journey that reflects the modern inextricable forces between humans and nature, adding her name to the roster of impressive artists who have made the ballet their own. Performed live by the Atlanta Ballet Orchestra, conductor Jonathan McPhee and guest conductor Tamara Dworetz, the iconic Stravinsky score is a reduced arrangement that is the only version authorized by the Stravinsky Trust.

Fascinatingly enough, the brouhaha surrounding Le Sacre du printemps was better-recorded for posterity than the actual ballet, which only ran for eight performances, three of them in London. In fact, by the time a remount was planned in 1920 using the original sets and costumes, no one remembered the original choreography. Impresario Serge Diaghilev (who produced the Rite for Ballets Russe) had parted ways with Nijinsky, who was suffering from what is called “mental illness.” Since then, productions ranging from depictions of the Wild West to a tribe with a sacrificial young male have been seen world-wide. The music – propelled into the pantheon of classical composition by Walt Disney’s Fantasia (1940) – has become a standard of the orchestral repertoire.

Schreier also tapped frequent collaborators Jason Ardizzone-West and Abigail Dupree-Polston to design the sets and costumes for the piece and immerse the audience in the cyclical nature from life into death unfolding onstage.

Sharing the program is 7 for Eight by former San Francisco Ballet Artistic Director Helgi Tomasson. Presented by Atlanta Ballet seven years ago, 7 for Eight is a ballet featuring eight dancers set to seven Johann Sebastian Bach movements, which will also be performed by the Atlanta Ballet Orchestra led by company pianist Western-Li Summerton.

Atlanta Ballet
Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre
at the intersection of Cobb Galleria Parkway and Akers Mill Road
live with The Atlanta Ballet Orchestra
February 7-14, 2025
for tickets, visit Atlanta Ballet