And why we should all get to see them before people stop even watching it. I’m not joking.
Why or how is lost to memory for me but I posted the first version of the Joffrey’s debut of “Le Sacre du Printemps” – a virgin if ever there was one as no one had ever seen the ballet. These dancers needed to create an emotional anti-ballet masterpiece based on the story telling of Millicent Hodson and Kenneth Archer. They told it well. The company drew from their own pains and joys and confusions and staged the footprint that all companies thereafter had the luck to follow. Luck? Yeah. Talent? Not necessarily.
As soon as the Mariinsky 2008 HD version was posted on YouTube all was sort of lost. Had the Joffrey allowed a posting of a clean copy then people would be able to see dancers experiencing their roles not counting their steps. Here is a tiny clip of what the original Joffrey from 1987 would look like were it not being hoarded like the end of the world were coming and only turned in toes would save you:
So it exists.
The Companhia Nacional de Bailados also performs the ballet semi-regularly but will not release a copy. I know they have some hardcore perfection in their history but this is what I have been able to get:
HOWEVER…there are a ton of Chosen One performances I have pulled together because of the dancers’ kind sharing or my good fortune. SEE FOR YOURSELF…uh…I forget the point. Oh yeah..I’m tired of trying. I don’t think there is anything left out there that I could acquire for free so if you would like to take over, drop me a line.
For years I have thought I understood what it was about but really, I was on the periphery. That did not stop me from waxing ridiculous when I started this blog. On I went about Le Sacre in 2006 but I wrote from the sheer emotional crush of it- the spiritual entanglement that befalls many of us lay people. To hell with the academics.
And so I count my blessings to have been connected with Millicent Hodson and Kenneth Archer. I have learned a lot about the ballet from them and also how to remain inclusive with it, never condescending. Because everyone who comes at it , comes from their own direction and there we all meet anyway. Doesn’t matter if a person is short on facts or the only one who has them, we all turn our toes in the same.
Am I going to emo-blog here? Nicholas Roerich. Yes, I knew who he was but I did not know what he did. He was, as Doctor Archer explains in this little disastrously amateur video I have thrown together, the “father of the ballet”. Without his word, Nijinsky wasn’t budging on the choreography. Which I think Stravinsky may have borrowed for his own but no matter how you slice this, they are mad Russians in the end.
Also dead. They are dead Russians.
There is a lot of online stuff liking Roerich to Rasputin and I am like “hey, I am already sold”. You don’t need to sweeten it up with darkness. Well, anymore than we already have here.
So Kenneth Archer tells the tale and I butcher it all into a video. Look! Here it is now!
The tribe depends on the sun god Jarilo to warm the earth thereupon they must immediately stomp the energies into the earth. The crops will grow, the animals will flourish and the year will be plentiful. There is no free lunch with Jarilo. He wants to be paid and – what a shocker – he wants a virgin. But he is a sick god and he wants her to commit suicide. This is one sick little marriage.
Being a virgin in Roerich’s Pagan Russia was such a known liability so why not take the chance on being a slut? I mean, I did it in 1981 and I survived. Of course, the stakes were different…anyway…
I am asked regularly by my awesome Commenters (I consider them mine. We, all 2,000 philistines have been rocking the 87 Joffrey on YouTube for 7 years. Other than breathing, I have done nothing that long).
Already off track.
I am asked “what is this about other than scaring people”. “is this fake or like real mythology”. “so what’s the story behind this. I heard everyone hated Stravinsky.”
Shit, what happened to that post from 2010! Nearly 6,000 people read it: a soup to nuts on Le Sacre. Probably full of inaccuracies but I assure you, I made up for it in drama and emotion. I was in a trance over Le Sacre du Printemps, the Nijinsky choreography as RECOVERED by Hodson,Archer, Robert Joffrey. Take that you bitchy prima from _________. Sending me a note to be careful with my wording: it is a reconstruction.
I wanted to say “is this because you were a horrible Chosen One. Bitch.
Ok…This was supposed to be simple facts for new Commenters and I am off the rails in the first 5 minutes on the keyboard.
Ready, Steady, Go!
1. Vaslav Nijinsky was the darling of the Russian Imperial Ballet, famous world round for his leaps. Nijinsky could dunk a basketball from a standing position. Not really., Basketball didn’t exist yet.
2. The “Impresario” Serge Diaghilev, in love with Nijinsky or the fame he would bring his Ballet Russes, steals the whole Russian company (almost) and, with Stravinsky whom Diaghilev recognized as a genius, throws a MASSIVE (fire) BIRD at Russia.
3. Stravinsky has great success with “The Firebird”, not asking much yet of the ear of Parisian aristocracy. It was tricky and a little advanced for people who only like “ec ta ta”…but there were tutu’s so it was ok.
4. Nijinsky leaps through one traditional ballet after another, sleeping with Diaghilev though who was using who we will never know. Something tells me they didn’t even know.
5: NOW COMS Petrushka. Nijinsky is the star of Stravinsky’s ballet. The Maestro does not like him and this photo is A PROMO SHOT not an indication of a relationship. (Stravinsky would not accept that Nijinsky understood his music or created something brilliant until 1961)
HOWEVER…in his later years he ” would tell stories of how Nijinsky inspired him. Look:
6: Nijinsky is given a shot at his own choreography by his boyfriend the “Impresario Diaghilev”. It is completely odd, bodies bent in the opposite direction of traditional ballet, a strange libretto with an end that implies masturbation. Set to Debussy, he got away with it. It was called L’apre midi d’u n faune” (this small clip of Pietragalla and Charles Jude is near perfect). His next choreography would ruin him and solidify Stravinsky as one of the greatest composers in history.
7. Nicholas Roerich writes a libretto of Russian Pagans who must sacrifice a virgin each year to a Sun Dude named Jarillo who will give them the energy of the sun and they can stomp it into the earth and plants will grow and they will not starve. Of course, he wants a virgin who will have to oddly sacrifice herself! Which is why they “glorify her” . The young maidens choose the virgin which boils down to “who do we hate”.! That circle would be a fist fight were I Chosen.’
The Sacrifice jumps herself to death. Over 135 leaps in under 5 minutes – these dancers an elite group and don’t go looking for any “Ekaterinas”.
She dances herself to death – watch the Joffrey’s Beatriz Rodriguez before anything else. She dances herself to death with something like 139 leaps in less than 5 minutes.
8. Nijinsky uses 50 performers and treats them as soloists in groups of 5 or 6 (I got that from Millicent Hodson – the most enlightened and patient choreographer/woman I have ever met). But man, this is something too new for 1913. He magnifies the ever changing Rite of Spring by finding a way for each “group of soloists” to represent the 100 instruments playing in the pit. But most importantly he stuck to the libretto. Nijinsky was later diagnosed a schizophrenic. It is thought the illness broke during his choreography. I don’t buy it.
8. A so called “Riot” ensues. Nijinsky’s ballet is performed 9 times and lost for 80 years. It was his masterpiece and he was denied the acknowledgment. He is sent on tour during which time he marries a woman and Diaghilev kicks him out of the ballet in a jealous fit.
9. Nijinsky’s career ends within ten or so years. His wife and child watch him take n away, institutionalized for the rest of his life.
10. HORRIBLE choreographies, maybe 30 are set to Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. They were ridiculously stupid, and I have lambasted each one somewhere in this blog, with the exception of Tero Saarinen’s interpretation; the first multi-media performance I ever saw.
11. Robert Joffrey has dance historian Millicent Hodson begin a restoration of Nijinsky’s hidden ballet. She meets and marries Kenneth Archer, himself an archeologist if art and historian at the top of his profession. Because of Dr. Archer, we learn about Nicholas Roerich: a huge clue to Le Sacre du Printemps.
12. A decade passes, Robert Joffrey’s cancer pushed into stage 4, Nijinsky stepped it up for his Champion and is resurrected. The Joffrey Ballet performs it for the world, an unknown dancer named Beatriz Rodriguez played The Chosen One a terrifying and nearly unbearable solo: dancing herself to death. The corp de ballet is transfigured, I dare you to find someone not plugged in. Robert Joffrey dies months after the debut, his long search for Nijinsky complete.
13. The ballet world changes.
14. The Nijinsky Inheritanceis left to The Joffrey who saved him and his ballet from a certain death.
le sacre du printemps: the collections 
