Remember that ballet, The Rite of Spring, that caused a riot when it premiered in Paris in 1913? Even though the controversy is usually attributed to Stravinsky’s score, the original choreography by Vaslav Nijinsky is, in my opinion, way weirder. The dancing probably stirred up more controversy than the music, and both, together, make for an even stranger experience than either one by itself.
The ballet has been choreographed (once famously by Pina Bausch) over 100 times, but this version here is a reconstruction of the original 1913 version. Imagine being a Parisian at the theatre in the early 1900s, enjoying Les Sylphides and its nice Chopin score and more traditional ballet feel… and then watching that right afterwards.
