almanya'dayım ama berlin'de değilim. berlin'de federal kültür vakfı ile freie universität'in "bahar ayini"nin 100. yılı vesilesiyle düzenlediği enfes bir sempozyum gerçekleşiyor: "SİPERLER ÜZERİNDE DANS. 100 YIL LE SACRE DU PRINTEMPS".
birbirinden ilginç bildirilerin yanısıra, sempozyum programı akşamları canlı gösterilerle desteklenmiş; rüya gibi!
blogumda en azından kaydı olması için buraya alıyorum. yoksa, meraklısı çoktan öğrenmiş ve berlin yolunu tutmuştur.
Twisted feet, snapped heads, jarring, abrupt movements,
rhythmic stomping and trembling. In the end, death by exhaustion, the
staged sacrifice for the heathen sun god. Dancing – excessive, powerful,
disturbing.
The premiere of “Le Sacre du Printemps” at the
Parisian Théâtre des Champs-Elysées on 29 May 1913 shocked audiences.
Vaslav Nijinsky’s choreography and Igor Stravinsky’s music created one
of the greatest scandals in 20th-century dance history. Performed on the
eve of World War I, the ballet uncannily foreshadowed the slaughter on
the battlefields: “Le Sacre du Printemps” – a dance over trenches.
One
hundred years later, an international and interdisciplinary conference
will address the special role that “Le Sacre du Printemps” played in
dance modernity and as a cultural-historical phenomenon. The debate will
focus on the aspects of victims and sacrifice, the relationship between
abstraction and ornamentation, and the peculiar interweave of modernism
and primitivism. What exactly caused the uproar at the premiere in 1913
and what relevance does the piece have today?
The conference is
embedded in an extensive event programme which includes reconstructions
of earlier choreographies and contemporary versions of “Le Sacre du
Printemps”. The scenographer Detlef Weitz has created a video
installation for the occasion, which will be shown in the rooms of
Radialsystem V. With its call for choreographic pieces highlighting “Le
Sacre du Printemps”, the HAU Hebbel am Ufer shall present a selection of
young, contemporary approaches to the theme “Dance over Trenches”.
Concept: Prof. Dr. Gabriele Brandstetter / Center of Movement Research (Zentrum für Bewegungsforschung)
With:
Jan Assmann, Gabriele Brandstetter, Laurent Chétouane,
deufert&plischke, Christine Gaigg, Lynn Garafola, Jack Halberstam,
Millicent Hodson, Stephanie Jordan, Herfried Münkler, Sasha Waltz,
Sigrid Weigel and others
Programme
Thursday, 14. November 2013
4:30 pm, Opening - Welcoming address
Hortensia Völckers
4:45 pm
Gabriele Brandstetter
Tanz über Gräben. The Rites of Spring 1913/2013
The Rite of Spring (Le Sacre du Printemps)
premiered in 1913 in the midst of a tense European setting. The
performance provoked one of the greatest scandals in dance history just a
year before the outbreak of World War I. A century has passed since,
and although no authorised record of Nijinsky’s choreography exists,
The Rite of Spring
has become a canonical work. Looking back, questions arise regarding
the work’s historical context in 1913, as well as the history of
successive productions. For example, in what way does Nijinsky’s
choreography merge the break with classical ballet aesthetics and the
fascination with primitivism at the start of modernity? The theme of
›sacrifice‹ lies at the centre of
The Rite of Spring and its
history of reception. Might the ritual sacrifice of a ›chosen‹ young
woman in a death dance foreshadow the violence and ›state of emergency‹
of World War I – a »dance over the trenches« (Modris Eksteins)? And how
do choreographers today address the offensive elements in
The Rite of Spring and the aesthetic and political challenges it poses?
6:00 pm
The Rite of Spring by Mary Wigman
A Reconstruction by the Theater Osnabrück and Theater Bielefeld
A DANCE HERITAGE FUND Project
The world premiere of Mary Wigman’s version of
The Rite of Spring took place at the Städtische Oper Berlin in
1957,
performed by the theatre’s own ballet ensemble. The only documentation
of this choreography exists in sketches, photos, stage notes and
especially the knowledge of dancers who participated in the piece over
50 years ago. Based on this material, Henrietta Horn, Susan Barnett and
Katharine Sehnert will reconstruct Wigman’s choreography. They will be
supported by Wigman’s former students and dancers Emma Lew Thomas and
Brigitta Herrmann from the USA.
Wigman’s
Rite of Spring was her last dance work, a choral
piece for 45 dancers, starring Dore Hoyer in the role of the ›Chosen
One‹. As in other previous productions, she uncompromisingly expressed
the central theme of her life and her vision of dance, i.e. sacrificing
oneself in the service of an idea that surpasses all personal ambitions.
»The human sacrifice is the symbol of the sacrifice that every person,
in dying, must pay to life so that its flow is unobstructed.« (Mary
Wigman)
This reconstruction project aims to restage Wigman’s version of
The Rite of Spring
as faithfully as possible using the existing materials and featuring a
new generation of dancers. More importantly, it will allow us to
reexamine and discuss one of the most important works of the 20th
century by one of Germany’s pioneering dance artists.
The DANCE HERITAGE FUND, a programme initiated by the Federal
Cultural Foundation, supports artistic projects dedicated to the
cultural heritage of dance. Reconstructions, installations, symposiums
and other artistic formats reflect the broad spectrum of German dance
history and are extensively documented on
www.tanzfonds.de.
Reconstruct The Rite of Spring?
Discussion with Susan Barnett, Henrietta Horn, Madeline Ritter and Patricia Stöckemann
Moderator: Claudia Henne
8:00 pm
Opening Le Cercle
Video installation by Detlef Weitz and Dominique Müller
The three-part, wall-to-wall video installation by Detlef Weitz and Dominique Müller highlights significant moments of
The Rite of Spring,
the eruptive event of 1913 whose tremors can still be felt today. Three
oversized screens in the room form a floating fragment depicting the
distinct character of the sacrificial circle in Nijinsky’s choreography.
These fabric-covered walls illustrated with figurines (design: Andree
Volkmann) call to mind the original costumes designed by Roerich. Two
different videos of choreographies from the past 100 years are projected
onto a background matrix, comprised not of mythic-like patterns, but
ornaments, printed with ambiguous war motifs which create visual rhythms
of their own.
The first film collage presents short sequences of footage from more
than twenty productions, pieced together as a continuous collage of
movement and artistically analyses the main themes and features of its
100-year-long performance history. The second video presents a centering
pattern of rhythmic movements, created by multiple reflections. The
rhythm of Stravinsky’s music brings order to the chaos and forms
forceful, strangely beautiful patterns. The legs, arms and heads of the
dancers appear and vanish to the time of the music as if a gigantic
machine were dispassionately sucking them up, or even devouring them at
an industrial pace: A dance over trenches in the coming brutal war?
9:00 pm, HAU Hebbel am Ufer (HAU1)
Sacré Sacre du Printemps
Laurent Chétouane
In
The Rite of Spring,
the foreign element is situated at the centre of society, but is
assimilated as such and thus is bereft of its original foreignness. This
is the starting point for Chétouane’s further considerations, which he
explores in his choreography. How can we allow the foreign element to
remain foreign? In a thematic shift from the ritualistic ›spring
sacrifice‹ to a choreographic and visual ›sacrifice‹ of
The Rite of Spring
itself, Chétouane addresses our inability to accept the foreign element
with all its differences. The three-part performance with seven dancers
presents a vision of coexistence with the foreign and its
non-representability by musically contrasting Stravinsky’s original
piece with a new composition by Leo Schmidthals.
Performing artists: Matthieu Burner, Joris Camelin, Kathryn Enright,
Joséphine Evrard, Charlie Fouchier, Mikael Marklund, Senem Gökçe
Oğultekin
Music: Igor Stravinsky, Leo Schmidthals
Coproducers: Ruhrtriennale, PACT Zollverein Essen, Tanzquartier Wien,
Theater Bremen, Rencontres chorégraphiques de Seine-Saint-Denis
(France), Kaaitheater Brüssel, Kampnagel Hamburg.
Funded by the
Federal Cultural Foundation, the Governing Mayor of Berlin – Senate
Chancellery – Cultural Affairs and by the Performing Arts Fund.
Friday, 15. November 2013
LE SACRE DU PRINTEMPS IN DANCE HISTORY
Moderator
Lucia Ruprecht
10:00 am
Lynn Garafola
A Century of Rites. The Making of an Avant-Garde Tradition
Since the premiere of
The Rite of Spring
in 1913, scores of choreographic works to the celebrated Stravinsky
music have seen the light of day. Most have vanished as quickly as
Nijinsky’s original ballet. But they keep coming; seemingly the idea of
the now legendary work, coupled with its memorable score, poses a
challenge few could resist. What accounts for the ballet’s staying
power? What ideologies and impulses do these
Rites seem to espouse and what conventions reject, and why have they retained their imaginative force? This paper argues that
The Rite of Spring,
precisely because it is a lost ballet, comprises a body of ideas rather
than a detailed choreographic script, and that this conceptual freedom
allows both for the ballet’s continuing reinvention and for the
persistence of ideas associated with the original. Thus,
The Rite
defies the ephemeral nature of dance by creating a “canon of memory”
that allows for the survival of multiple lost forms through the
palimpsests of later productions.
10:45 am
Stephanie Jordan
Sacre as Dance Machine. Recent Re-Visions
No
other score can boast such a tradition of dance productions. Hundreds
of choreographers over the century have been both thrilled by the power
and energy of Stravinsky’s score and shocked by its statement.
Fascination with that ambiguity has given rise to a range of treatments:
casts both large and small, period as well as contemporary settings,
different narrative approaches and cultural diversity.
Perhaps prompted by the 1987 Nijinsky reconstruction and a surge of interest in the
Sacre
legacy, some choreographers, especially since the 1980s, have explored
its theme with a new sense of irony and fresh awareness of the burden of
its past. According to their terms, no longer can this score be danced
‘straight’. It is perhaps, too, as if Pina Bausch’s 1975
Sacre, which has achieved classic status, represented the end of a line.
Using Bausch’s landmark initiative as a point of contrast, the paper discusses
Sacres
by such choreographers as Paul Taylor, Jérôme Bel, Xavier Le Roy and
Mark Morris, work that explores identity, relations between audience and
performers, authorial power and dark humour. New ways of asserting the
physicality and driving force of the score are also considered, such as
taking machine motion to an absurd extreme as well as experimenting with
a more flexible, or even entirely negative, musicality: the dance not
being motorised by Stravinsky.
12:15 pm
VICTIM/SACRIFICE
Moderators
Jana Schuster and
Alexander Schwan
12:30 pm
Herfried Münkler
Mythic Sacrifices and Real Corpses
In
autumn 1914, Friedrich Meinecke described the German casualties along
the Yser Canal as a »springtime sacrifice«. In view of the fact that the
Battle of Ypers – called the Battle of Langemarck in Germany – took
place in autumn, this reference was not just about the fallen, but about
the salvation and redemption which had been made possible through their
sacrifice, a concept which first appeared in Stravinsky’s
The Rite of Spring.
This view revealed a fundamental break with that of the Enlightenment
which sought to overcome the role of sacrifice. In the place of
historical-theoretical principles of progress, the beginning of the 20
th century was taken by the idea of aging empires and societies whose
political and social orders could only be rejuvenated and renewed by
sacrifice. This revaluation of the significance of sacrifice
strengthened the willingness to go to war in the first months of World
War I – especially among the student population. The suggestion of the sacrificial resisted the promise of the Enlightenment to do away with sacrifice.
2:15 pm
Michael Welker
Sacrifice, Victim, Sin and Atonement
In modern cultures, the discussion of sacrifice, victim, sin and
atonement has become convoluted and is frequently misused and abused.
The problems begin with the inability of many languages to clearly
distinguish the terms ›sacrifice‹ and ›victim‹ (in German, both are
translated as ›
Opfer‹). When we speak of traffic victims, war
victims and drug victims, we express (albeit dishonestly and
fatalistically) a tragic inevitability behind their deaths. Discourse
regarding sin is similarly misconstrued. Modern societies are reluctant
to consider the powerlessness of their political, legal, moral and
religious instruments. Sin, on the other hand, focuses on massive
self-endangerment, demonstrating to what extent these instruments have
reached their limits or have even been corrupted. And atonement is
associated with the seemingly archaic concepts of revenge and
retribution, which should have no place in contemporary legal and
ethical discourse and completely refute a ›theology of atonement‹.
This lecture will outline the relationships between sacrifice,
victim, sin, atonement and the rationality behind them in view of
biblical traditions. It will show that the normativity which
characterises these expressions are rooted in a deep awareness of
suffering and hardship, and above all, the effort to provide normative
and religious support and orientation to human existence which finds
itself at the brink of massive self-endangerment and mortal doom.
3:00 pm
Sigrid Weigel
The
Cultic and Art Value of Sacrifice. The Afterlife of Pagan and Christian
Images of Sacrifice in Modern Dance and Music Theatre
This
lecture investigates how the figure of sacrifice is presented on stage
in modern music theatre and dance theatre productions in two steps –-
first, in terms of its cultural-historical signature and second, the
comparison between
The Rite of Spring and other configurations of sacrifice in music theatre around 1900.
In this lecture, I intend to discuss Stravinsky’s and Roerich’s reference to ›pagan Russia‹ in the subtitle of
The Rite of Spring
in connection with the question posed around 1900 concerning the
continued existence of pagan antiquity in the »pathos formulas« of
European culture (Aby Warburg). The focus of the discussion will be on
the ambivalence of the victim in the sacrificial dance, the connection
between distinction and death, and the function of the sacrifice for the
community. These aspects will be assessed on the basis of various
religious-historic references to sacrificial concepts.
With the aid of Walter Benjamin’s distinction between cultic value
and art value, I will investigate how the sacrificial figure changed
during its transferral to the dance and music theatre stage.
Furthermore, I will compare the sacrificial dance in
The Rite of Spring with the existence of sacrificial elements of pagan and Christian origin in other works, for example, Wagner’s
Parsifal (1882), Zemlinsky’s
Traumgörge (1904/06) and Strauss’
Salome (1905).
3:45 pm
Burkhardt Wolf
The Autumn of Primitivism. Sacrifice and Social Regeneration before the Great War
The premiere of
The Rite of Spring coincided with the publication of
Totem and Taboo
in 1913. While Sigmund Freud examined the gamut of contemporary
theories on sacrifice to support his claim of a deeply rooted
relationship between the inner life and the social behaviour of the
›primitive‹ and modern neurotics, Stravinsky revealed the ›decadent‹
desire for antiquity in the artistic
fin de siècle with a
scandalous, seemingly barbaric sensation. Against this backdrop, it
could be argued that 1913 witnessed a final wave of anthropological
theories and their corresponding aesthetics in which a reversion to
›wild‹ social rituals still served as a guarantee for their regenerative
potential. Viewed from this perspective,
The Rite of Spring
hit the stage at exactly the same moment as primitivistic social
theories were waning in relevance and, with the outbreak of war, would
require fundamental revision in line with Stravinsky’s scenarios. If the
initially provocative modernism was an orchestration of that which is
long past, as Adorno claims, then perhaps its motivation was not only
musical, but ›ideological‹ as well.
5:00 pm
Inge Baxmann
Sacrifice and Devotion as Cultural Criticism. Dance and the Liturgical Community in Modern Times
In
the early 20th century, dance became a model of community, whose ties
to a willingness to sacrifice and unconditional devotion were linked to
transcendent ideals. Counter to a contractual model between society and
politics in which »each seeks his own advantage and makes a good
business deal« as Ernst Bloch stated in
The Spirit of Utopia
(1918), dancers like Rudolf von Laban and Mary Wigman regarded dance as a
liturgical or cultic expression. Liturgies were originally ecstatic
dances around an altar, the rhythmic movements were a form of
communication with the gods and the incommensurate, which also fostered
community-building. In modern times, group and mass choreographies
especially strived to revive these community-building energies. The
tragic element, the »fateful connection« (Mary Wigman) and sacrifice
became culturally critical figures of interpretation, which many hoped
would intensify life and renew society.
These group and mass choreographies were later integrated into
political demonstrations which expressed a new political spirit. Instead
of public debates and rational consensus between individuals, this form
of political association (or rather, community) was based on a shared
ecstatic experience. As one commentator described at the time, the
meta-communication of rhythmic vibrations was supposed to »set
[political] sentiments in motion.«
5:30 pm
Nikolaus Müller-Schöll
Gestures of Surrendering (the Art). On the task of the performer in Laurent Chétouane’s "Sacré Sacre du Printemps"
In what might be called one of the most sophisticated readings of Kant’s
Analytics of the Sublime,
the French philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy argues that what is offering
itself in the sublime is the offering (›l’offrande‹) as such. What we
face in the sublime is an experience of a limit: "… at the limit of the
art", he writes, "there is the gesture of offering: the gesture which is
offering the art and the gesture by which the art touches its limit."
("
… à la limite de l’art, il y a le geste de l’offrande: le geste
qui offre l’art, et le geste par lequel l’art lui-même touche à sa
limite.") In my lecture, I would like to connect this specific
reading of the Kantian sublime to one of the most courageous recent
variations on
The Rite of Spring, namely to
Sacré Sacre du Printemps,
a choreography by Laurent Chétouane. As I would like to argue this
choreographic work is all about how one can touch a limit within dance:
The moment when dance reaches a point where it is neither art nor some
kind of stereotypical ›nature‹ but rather something in between. In this
moment, a body is exposed which is both condition as well as the limit
of the dancer’s performance. By relating
Sacré Sacre du Printemps to some other works of Chétouane’s, I will show that his different works are similar in that they all try to bring forth the
Aufgabe (task, but as well giving up) of the performer.
6:00 pm
Sacrifice and Society. The Politics of Choreography
Discussion with Inge Baxmann, Nikolaus Müller-Schöll, Laurent Chétouane
Moderator Gabriele Brandstetter
8:00 pm
SACRES
Josep Caballero García
SACRES is a solo dance piece for a man about his encounter with
Le Sacre du Printemps:
with the myth of its premiere(s), memories of the famous choreographies
of Vaslav Nijinsky (in the reconstruction by Millicent Hodson and
Kenneth Archer) and the celebrated version of Pina Bausch. Which
questions does
Sacre ask out of our perspective and how can
they be used to benefit from the heritage of Nijinsky and Bausch in
order to carry it on?
With the help of re-construction and de-construction of movement
material, the iconic piece is demystified. At the same time a new
perspective on
Le Sacre du Printemps is created out of an
emotional and very personal examination of the piece. The confrontation
with copyrights is posing very basic questions, however: What actually
defines
Le Sacre du Printemps? When is
Sacre really
Sacre? What is allowed to be shown, danced, or played?
SACRES is operating at the limits of these restrictions, outraged, driven, angry, beaten.
Idea,
Choreography, Dance: Josep Caballero García, Music: Full of Hell:
Affirmation of Nothing, Dramaturgic Collaboration: Claudia Jeschke, Mira
Moschallski
Funded by Kunststiftung NRW and Fonds Darstellende Künste e.V.
With the support of tanzhaus nrw Düsseldorf.
8:00 pm, HAU Hebbel am Ufer (HAU2)
Sacre 100 # 1
Saturday, 16 November 2013
10:00 am
ABSTRACTION/ORNAMENT
Moderators
Sarah Burkhalter and
Lucia Ruprecht
10:15 am
Christian Spies
Tradition and/or Innovation. The Use of Ornament circa 1900
At
the turn of the 20th century, opinions diverged when it came to the use
of ornament. For some, ornamentation was an emblem of ossified
historicism. It represented a primitive desire for embellishment and was
even decried as a crime. For others, the use of ornament was a sign of
artistic ambition, which at the beginning of modernity, signified the
innovation of autonomous artwork. Although ornament was regarded by many
artists as mere decoration, the use of ornament began playing an
increasingly central role in the arts especially during the early years
of abstraction. In fact, it appears that tradition and innovation went
hand-in-hand in the ornamentation around 1900.
With regard to the fine arts, ornament was clearly used in the first performance of
The Rite of Spring,
in particular, in the dancers’ costumes designed by Nicholas Roerich.
These were modeled after popular, traditional garments. In combination
with the set design, a scene was presented, in which tradition was
shifted to the fore. This in turn highlighted the novelty of the
innovative choreography all the more distinctly.
If we consider a more general notion of ornamentation and regard the
dancers’ geometric figures of movement and the rhythmic structures of
the music as ornaments as well, then these merge with the traditional
ornamentation of the costumes. In this sense, the use of ornament not
only functions as a joint connecting the set design, dance and music,
but defines the relationship between tradition and innovation – one that
is not merely dichotomous by default.
11:00 am
Jane Pritchard
Treasures from Le Sacre du Printemps.
Surviving Material from Productions for Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes Held
in the Collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London
The
Department of Theatre and Performance at the Victoria and Albert Museum
has the richest collection of theatre material from the original
Roerich-designed, Nijinsky-choreographed production of
The Rite of Spring.
The illustrated presentation will look at the museum’s holdings ranging
from costumes and accessories and documentation for the costumes
through to programmes, press and promotional material. It will also
examine the rich collection of pencil and pastel drawings by Valentine
Gross. The presentation emphasises the importance of primary materials
and will conclude with a brief look at the immediate reaction to the
innovative ballet not via riots in the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées but
spoof productions on stage.
11:45 am Break
12:15 pm
Georg Witte
The Dance of Language
Though both pieces premiered in 1913, the ›archaic‹
Rite of Spring and the ›futuristic‹ opera
Victory over the Sun,
appear to be worlds apart. However, these two polar events of Russian
modernity do share a common penchant for the elementary and original
dimension of expressive forms, be it physical, verbal, graphic or
musical in nature. In this context, concepts regarding the gestural
primacy of language are particularly significant. Poetic language may be
viewed as dancing language when based on the connection between the
gestural and ornamental. Playwrights and critics (e.g. Nikolai Evreinov,
Sergei Volkonsky) have postulated a close correlation between the
rhythmic movement of the body and spoken language. The tension between
expressive movement and rhythmic-abstract movement can also be
identified in language.
The dance of language is visually transferred onto the written form of poetic text. In the futuristic manifesto
The Letter as Such
(1913), the poets Velimir Chlebnikov und Aleksei Kručenych call for the
liberation of letters from the typographical »prison garb« and
»formation in rank and file«. The expressive and ornamental textures
which they suggest as alternatives are rooted in a gesturally-based
script. Moreover, the acoustic dimension of poetic language is
represented in the image of dance. According to Viktor Šklovsky, the
poetic word differs from every-day utterances in the same way dance
differs from walking. The symbolist Andrei Bely describes the poetic
glossolalia as a primal dance of the tongue in the cavity of the mouth.
2:00 pm
Matthew McDonald
Rhythmic Reinvention in The Rite
Nijinsky’s choreography of
The Rite of Spring "no longer has
any ties whatsoever to the classical ballet," wrote Jacques Rivière in
his famous review of the premiere: "Here, everything has been started
anew, everything fashioned on the spot, everything reinvented."
Stravinsky’s score also captured this sense of reinvention, but whereas
virtually all commentators agree on the novelty of Stravinsky’s score
and its irregular rhythmic patterns, opinion has been divided regarding
its design and the effect of these patterns on listeners. On one side,
Theodor W. Adorno argued that Stravinsky’s rhythms seem to have arisen
from "the throw of the dice." Many scholars have argued otherwise,
however, characterising these rhythms as logically patterned and
deliberately crafted.
In this lecture, I will suggest that Stravinsky
employed a fundamentally mechanical, ›automated‹ procedure for
generating his irregular rhythms and metrical schemes, one that
ultimately provided a template for Nijinsky’s choreographic innovations.
Specifically, Stravinsky seems to have converted intervallic series,
derived from prominent chords or melodies, into durational ones,
equating intervals measured in semitones with durations measured in
beats. This claim is supported by a wealth of evidence drawn from the
sketches, autographs, and earliest printed editions of the score, and it
applies to the opening of virtually every titled section of
The Rite.
Recognition of this procedure and its symbolic meanings provides a new
perspective on how Stravinsky’s rhythms aided Nijinsky in his efforts to
bypass balletic conventions and to reveal, in Nijinsky’s words, "the
soul of nature expressed by movement to music."
2:45 pm
David J. Levin
Embodiment and Displacement. Adorno, Stravinsky and The Rite of Spring
In the course of his critique of Stravinsky, Theodor W. Adorno
famously argued that Stravinsky’s music denied the musical subject a
basis from which to engage the rhythmic displacement that so forcefully
and so thoroughly characterised his music. Unlike the modernist
practices which Adorno celebrated, the rhythmic strategies of
Stravinsky’s music purportedly stood in for a compositional practice
that cancelled meaningful critical engagement. The question that I
propose to pursue in this paper involves a dimension that Adorno, in his
critique, tended to disregard, namely, the role of mise-en-scene in the
disposition of Stravinsky’s work. What happens when the auditor is also
a spectator, when the composition in question is staged, its musical
discourse supplemented by embodied action? More specifically, what role
does mise-en-scene play in the constitution and circulation of
displacement? And given the range and diversity of productions of
The Rite of Spring, could
one imagine a choreographic practice that displaces the displacement?
What would such a practice entail? And what would be its consequences?
4:00 pm
MODERNISM/PRIMITIVISM
Moderators
Maren Butte and
Susanne Foellmer
4:15 pm
Jack Halberstam
World’s End: Death, Dinosaurs and Dance
In Disney’s
Fantasia (1940), the animated sequence that accompanies Stravinsky’s
Rite of Spring
is a dark and violent piece about the extinction of the dinosaurs. The
narrator introduces the segment by making a connection between the
primitivism that inspired Stravinsky’s music and the emergence of life
on earth. Just as Stravinsky’s music and Nijinsky’s ballet reach back to
a fantasy of primal sacrifice in order to express the brutal forces
within modernity, so Disney’s
Fantasia builds upon these
earlier texts to draw out the violence lurking in the heart of childhood
itself. In this talk, I will use the dinosaur sequence from
Fantasia to discuss two different strands of thought that find expression in
The Rite of Spring.
In one, we find a punk sensibility that articulates rage, riot and
wildness and that influences the punk gestures and noises of bands like
The Sex Pistols and
The Slits
in the 1970s. In the other, we find a politics of death, destruction
and sacrifice that succumbs to the logic of the survival of the fittest
and that demands a ritual sacrifice of the weak in order to bond the
community of the strong. How can we hold on to the anarchistic wildness
of
The Rite of Spring without feeding in to its atavistic
fantasies of degeneration and pollution? How do we read the colonial
fantasies of primitive others that form its core now? What are the
aesthetic legacies of
The Rite of Spring not only in ballet and
classical music but in relation to punk rock, queer anarchy and
contemporary obessions with the end of the world? What do we do now with
this dance of death?
5:00 pm
Stefanie Diekmann
No Dinos. De-Figuration in Disney’s Fantasia/The Rite of Spring (1940)
Among the animated films which comprise the programme of Walt Disney’s
Fantasia (USA 1940), the fourth one – based on a shortened, modified version of Stravinsky’s
The Rite of Spring – is particularly exceptional. As in the other episodes, in particular the introductory episode featuring Bach’s
Toccata in D Minor and the concluding episode with Mussorgsky’s
Night on Bald Mountain, there is a transition from figuration to de-figuration, from conventional animation to abstract choreography. However,
The Rite of Spring
episode also contains distinct references to abstract cinematic works
of the 1920s, animation films of the historic avant-garde, Cinéma Pur,
as well as formal experiments by such film artists as Len Lye, which
were being carried out around the same time. This lecture focuses less
on the rather choppy evolutionary depiction portrayed in the first three
chapters of
Fantasia, and more on the relationship between
Disney’s cinematographic work with ornamentation, abstract choreography
and de-figuration – an aspect, located in an entirely different place in
the aesthetic spectrum of historic animated films.
5:45 pm
deufert&plischke
Massacre Masqué. Theatre as Living Environment
Lecture Demonstration
One can argue that the audience played the leading role at the world premiere of The Rite of Spring
in 1913. Not only the choreography on stage, but also the agitation
among the viewers in the audience were elementary parts of the
performance and played an integral role in making The Rite of Spring the legend that it is today. In their ironic piece Massacre Masqué (2013), the artistic duo deufert&plischke return the Rite of Spring to its original main character – the audience.
Since 2001, Kattrin Deufert and Thomas Plischke have
been developing theatre spaces, which, like epic landscapes, beg to be
used as venues of movement. deufert&plischke reject the idea of
theatre which produces frontal and cinematographic images from a
critical distance. Instead, they aim to create narrative theatre which
throws the audience into a maelstrom of proximity, detail, participation
and vitality. In this way, theatre can be a place where the artists are
no longer solely responsible for what happens, but where everyone
shares the responsibility. Only then can the institution of theatre
reformulate, refine and reposition itself and, in so doing, become a
parliament, academy and living environment for many.
Away with the audience of experts! Long live epic theatre that invites everyone to use their bodies!
8:00 pm
The Autumn of Le Sacre du Printemps
Millicent Hodson and
Kenneth Archer with dancers from
Sasha Waltz & Guests
Lecture Performance
Millicent Hodson and Kenneth Archer will present selected scenes from their reconstruction of
The Rite of Spring
after Vaslav Nijinsky, working together with dancers from the company
Sasha Waltz & Guests. In a lecture performance, these dance excerpts
will be placed in the context of Jacques Rivière’s review, published in
November 1913 six months after its tumultuous premiere, and which
fundamentally exemplify the modernity of Nijinsky’s choreography.
Archer
and Hodson met Sasha Waltz at a presentation of their reconstruction of
this famous piece in Warsaw in 2011. Waltz and several of her dancers
attended the rehearsals and wondered why the reconstruction had never
been undertaken by artists of contemporary dance. The discussion led to a
workshop in Berlin in 2012, which this lecture demonstration at
RADIALSYSTEM V will continue and combine with text passages by Jacques
Rivière.
Followed by a discussion with
Millicent Hodson and
Kenneth Archer
Moderator:
Yvonne Hardt
8:00 pm, HAU Hebbel am Ufer (HAU2)
Sacre 100 # 2 8:00 pm, HAU Hebbel am Ufer (HAU1)
Sacré Sacre du Printemps
Laurent Chétouane
Sunday, 17 November 2013
11:00 am
“We have forgotten how to sacrifice.”
Discussion with Sasha Waltz et al.
Moderator Claudia Jeschke
For Sasha Waltz, Stravinsky’s composition of the century,
The Rite of Spring, bundles several thematic strands which have fascinated her since the beginning of her career. In the piece
Na Zemlje
(1999), for example, we can recognise elements of her work on rituals,
the subject of sacrifice, the individual and the group. In
Medea (2007),
Jagden und Formen (Zustand 2008) and
Continu (2010), she continued to explore these themes in ever increasing depth.
“I
have long been interested in archaic myths and rites which conjure the
power and sublime order of nature. In today’s highly technologised
world, the powers of nature appear to come in the form of catastrophes.
Rituals, on the other hand, depict the cyclic structure of nature and
explore the relationship between human beings and their origin. Faith
and the relationship to a higher power are strengthened; the individual
sacrifices himself for the benefit of society.” (Sasha Waltz, January
2013)
12:00 pm
Nicola Gess
“That is how
far we must go back so as not to merely ‘antiquitise’.” Primitivism and
Modernity in Literature, Art and Music of the Early 20th Century
This lecture situates Stravinsky’s
The Rite of Spring
in a human- and art-scientific discourse of the early 20th century – a
time marked by a fascination with the ›primitive‹ which could be found
in various figures, be it in indigenous, rural or medieval cultures, in
children or the mentally ill, and in various styles – from abstraction
to the extreme visual realism. The discourse hopes the art to be
genealogically and even ontologically substantiated and radically
renewed by ›the primitive‹. Although the term ›primitivism‹ has long
been established in art history, this lecture will also demonstrate its
relevance for modern literature and music, examine its specific
characteristics and make repeated references to Stravinsky’s
The Rite of Spring.
References to sacrifice and formal abstraction will be highlighted as
important primitivistic themes of literary and art-theoretical
discussions.
12:45 pm
Jan Assmann
The ›Primeval‹ as a Breakthrough into the Unprecedented. Memory and Expectation in Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring
In describing
The Rite of Spring, Theodor W. Adorno wrote in
1949, »His music is devoid of recollection and consequently lacking in
any time continuum of permanence. Its course lies in reflexes.« In this
statement, Adorno undoubtedly emphasised one of the work’s central
aspects, but also undercut the vital role which time and memory play in
the piece nonetheless. Firstly, this concerns the invocation of the
archaic, the »primeval«, as Thomas Mann describes it in his novel
Doctor Faustus.
The protagonist Adrian Leverkühn is obsessed with the question »How is
one released? How is one set free?« and the devil responds, »We offer
only the right and true – that is no longer the classical, my friend,
what we give to experience, it is the archaic, the primeval, that which
long since has not been tried.« Thomas Mann set this dialogue in 1912/13
– the same time
The Rite of Spring was being produced.
For
his »Pictures from Pagan Russia«, Stravinsky invokes the archaic by
incorporating traditional musical motifs and giving them a space which
certainly creates a time continuum and infuses the work with the type of
identity that Adorno repudiates. In fact, its representation of the
primeval is what makes
The Rite of Spring a milestone of modernity.
1:30 pm Lunch
2:30 pm
Elena Vereschagina
French versus Russian in The Rite of Spring
In
a letter to Florent Schmitt, dated 20 July 1911, Stravinsky wrote, »I
play only French music - yours, Debussy, Ravel«. Clearly, the attraction
to Russian and French art was as strong as ever in those creative years
of composing
The Rite of Spring (1911-13). Paris was described
as ›The Central Station‹ of Europe, and Picasso, Stravinsky and
Modigliani were named by Cocteau as the most important French artists
(though none of them were native French). The international avant-garde
and aristocratic trends (which aimed to present and confirm national
traditions) stood in opposition to each other in terms of critical
opinion, but co-existed on the concert poster. This is evident, for
example, in the practice of the Russian seasons (both addressed to the
aristocracy and Bohemians) and in the aesthetic programme of Countess de
Greffuhle, Diaghilev’s chief patroness in Paris, which included the
revived French antiquity (
Anacréon Rameau) on the one hand, and
Handel, Wagner, Richard Strauss, Elgar and Scriabin on the other.
National tradition, enlightened cosmopolitanism and orientalism
constituted a whole »governmentality« (Michel Foucault) that determined
pre-war cultural policy. But that, which is perceived in the French
context as an exoticism at the boundaries of the Western world, is an
internal affair for the creators of the Russian seasons. From this point
of view, the tamed, ornamental evil spirits of
The Firebird (an adequate response to the demands of Western Orientalism) seem unsatisfactory.
The Rite of Spring
integrates chronological layers of its creation period (from the
initial idea to the premiere night), combines the unique approaches of
its co-authors (librettist, set designer, choreographer and composer),
and ultimately becomes a comprehensive study of the national myth.
3:15 pm
Christine Gaigg
DeSacre! Pussy Riot Meets Vaslav Nijinsky
Art explains art: In my choreographic project
DeSacre!
(premiere April 2013), I along with seven dancers staged the video
footage depicting Pussy Riot’s artistic demonstration in the Christ the
Saviour cathedral in Moscow on 21 February 2012. Based on Vaslav
Nijinsky’s choreography
The Rite of Spring which evoked a
scandal 100 years ago, I showed how art works – when presented at the
right place at the right time – can put their finger on the sore spot of
society.
Though developed 100 years apart, these two choreographic
texts illuminate each other and reveal what they have in common, i.e.
their unconditionality and gestural vocabulary. Applying methods of
re-enactment and film analysis in our rehearsal process, we discovered
evidence supporting the claim that the Pussy Riot performance was a
conceptually well-planned artistic and completely non-violent action.
These aspects were not addressed during the court proceedings against
the young women. Therefore,
DeSacre! is something like a
post-trial, art- and communication-theoretical expert appraisal. In my
lecture, I will discuss how I gained astounding insights by using the
dancers’ knowledge of their bodies and the competence of the Russian
translator Erich Klein during the rehearsal process.
5:00 pm, HAU Hebbel am Ufer (HAU2)
Sacre 100 # 1
6:00 pm
The Autumn of Le Sacre du Printemps
Millicent Hodson and
Kenneth Archer with dancers from
Sasha Waltz & Guests
Lecture Performance
8:00 pm, HAU Hebbel am Ufer (HAU2)
Sacre 100 # 2
HAU PERFORMANCES:
The HAU Hebbel am Ufer theatre launched an open call for proposals by young choreographers residing in Germany on the topic of
The Right of Spring.
A total of 54 artistic concepts were submitted to the HAU for
consideration. The proposals included a wide range of approaches – from
addressing sociopolitical references to exploring specific qualities of
the musical and choreographic material of
The Rite of Spring. In August 2013, a jury selected ten projects from the pool of submitted proposals for presentation during the
Dance over Trenches
congress to be held at the HAU Hebbel am Ufer this November. The
winning projects were chosen for their unflinching and serious approach
to this canonical piece, their originality and their sharp perspectives.
In his essay
"On the Concept of History", Walter Benjamin
writes "For every image of the past that is not recognized by the
present as one of its own concerns threatens to disappear
irretrievably." The program
Sacre 100 wishes to go beyond a
mere historicism in the field of the performative arts. The aim is to
draw attention to this historic work, fostering not only its study, but
also promoting new approaches to the issues which get raised by
The Rite of Spring to this day.
Fri 15.11.2013, 20:00 and Sun 17.11.2013, 17:00 / HAU2
Sacre 100 #1:
Marcela Giesche
Melanie Lane
Adam Linder
Tian Rotteveel
Kareth Schaffer
Sat 16.11.2013, 20:00 and Sun 17.11.2013, 20:00 / HAU2
Sacre 100 #2:
Jorge Rodolfo De Hoyos Jr. + Nir Vidan
Milla Koistinen
Adam Linder
Lea Moro
Netta Yerushalmy
& Kenji Ouellet / Anna-Luella Zahner
Fri 15.11.: 13:00, 13:30, 14:00, 14:30, 15.00, 15:30, 17:00, 17:30, 18:00, 18:30, 19:00, 19:30
Sat 16.11.: 13:00, 13.30, 14:00, 14.30, 15.00, 15.30, 17:00, 17:30, 18:00, 18:30, 19:00, 19:30
Sun 17.11.: 12:00, 12:30, 13:00, 13:30, 14:00, 15:00, 15:30, 16:00, 16:30
Each Session of Kenji Ouellet and Anna-Luella Zahner takes 30 minutes.
Only 2 people can participate at a time. Therefore, a registration
beforehand is necessary. To register call 030.25900427 or go directly to
the box office at HAU2 (opening hours Mon–Sat 15:00–19:00).
Participation is only possible in combination with a ticket for "Sacre
100".
Melanie Lane
Igor - hush hush
"The almost impossible arithmetic of Stravinsky's musical language is
what is explored in 'Igor-hush hush'. Studying part one of ‘The Rite of
Spring - The Adoration of the Earth’, the poly-rhythmic score acts as
the framework in which a choreographic interpretation is explored - in
silence. Learning the unrelenting score is a 'rite' in itself in which a
mind-body ceremony develops. The challenge is almost 'un-human' in it's
outcome, producing a discipline that evokes a sense of survival, to
survive the score itself - all while being performed within the irony of
'dead silence'. This study is the consequence of an attempt to produce a
musical illustration within a sonic vacuum and is imagined for a group
of dancers."
Melanie Lane
Choreography: Melanie Lane
Performed by: Florian Bücking and Melanie Lane
Musical study from: 'The Rite of Spring' 1962 Columbia Symphony
Orchestra recording - conducted by Stravinsky | Written score - 'The
Rite of Spring', original score arranged for piano for four hands
Adam Linder
SPRING CLEANING
"In ‘Spring Cleaning’, the cleaner works to dust-off his immediate
structural and cultural environment. Using ornamental labour he brings
into physical presence some of the figures that have come to be
associated with the ‘Rite of Passage’ into the theatre. The cleaner
whistles while he works—using the vernacular of rap to address these
canonically inflected figures."
Adam Linder
Cleaning: Adam Linder
Sound: Adam Gunther
Lea Moro
Le Sacre du Printemps, a ballet for a single body
Who wrote this fiendish Rite of Spring?
What right had he to write this thing?
Against our helpless ears to fling
Its crash, clash, cling, clang, bing, bang, bing?
Anonymous, Letter to the Boston Herald (1924)
I am the core of the Ballet. I am the dancer, the ensemble, the old wise
man, the witch and the bear. I am the only one dancing the rite of
spring. I ritualize the space by embodying it all.
I go into my steps, I know whom I am following and whose hands I am
holding, I keep the posture for five seconds then a quick change, I
exhaust myself and run as if I could fly.
Sometimes I risk slipping or getting slightly out of sync with the rest
of the hidden ensemble, but I am aware of that and I try to play with
it. I do my best to represent everybody present in this dance.
Therefore this choreography is a constant shift of what might seem
present and absent regarding the whole; a history, a myth, a fantasy, an
aesthetic and the spectators of Le Sacre du Printemps. I extract
elements: figures, movement energies, textures and a general
choreographic narration from Nijinsky´s dance. The first part “The
adoration of the earth” is all about society and therefore I have chosen
the form of a solo as an oppositional element, that is able to
interrogate and play with the individual representation and the
imaginary energy of the group.
How many bodies can the singular body represent? I feel no interest in
slavishly recreating a pre-existing dance in its entirety. I am rather
fascinated by understanding its mechanisms, its intentions, its
historical impact and the fact that there is always something lacking,
something always escapes our relation to the present time. Therefore it
is more a question of retracing the steps from my memory in order to
invent the basis of the dance, which is one where fictional realities
co-exist with the performance that is here now.
Concept / Choreography / Performance: Lea Moro
Production: meulmoro
Artistic Advisor: Alice Chauchat, Josep Caballero Garcia
Artistic Support: Désirée Meul, Maja Zimmermann, Anna Posch
Stage & Light: Hubert Scheppan
Special thanks to Silke Bake, Sophia New, Linda Sepp and Paul from afoltec Buchstabenkunst Berlin
Co-production: Hebbel am Ufer (HAU Berlin), Hochschulübergreifendes Zentrum Tanz (HZT) Berlin
Tian Rotteveel
Avalanche
"Avalanche is a resistance dance, where body forces and orchestral
impacts play into each other. Exploring the tension field between the
natural and the composed, between the useful and the useless, between
the historic and the futuristic. A constant reorientation, defying
definition seeking a triumph over oppression and refrain of the present,
the past, the artificial, the natural, the self and the other."
Tian Rotteveel
Concept: Tian Rotteveel,
Choreography and Performance: Michele Rizzo, Tian Rotteveel
Music: Tian Rotteveel
Artistic advice: Jeanine Durning
Kareth Schaffer
OPFER/ The Sacrifice of Kareth Schaffer
"At least 186 choreographers other than Vaslav Nijinsky have attempted a
‘Sacre du Printemps’ with the world-famous music of Igor Stravinsky.
Sacre may once have been synonymous with scandal; however, for many
decades thereafter it constituted a badge of achievement for the
ambitious choreographer. Today, it- well, why would a young
choreographer do yet another version of Sacre?
Because of the music?
Because of the history?
Because of the fame?
Because of the money?
Or perhaps because Sacre is no longer--has never been--about innovation:
it ensures that a pagan time, a circular time, is honored. Between
market imperatives, personal desires, and a whole lot of historical
baggage, the sacrifice must still be prepared. In OPFER/The Sacrifice of
Kareth Schaffer, the Chosen One explains why there was never much
choice involved..."
Kareth Schaffer
Choreography/Performance: Kareth Schaffer
Costume: Stine Frandsen
Advice: Lee Meir, Julek Kreutzer, Martin Hansen
Marcela Giesche
Le Sacre du Printemps: L’Adoration de La Terre
Yarila
by Sergey Gorodetzky (1884-1921)
First to sharpen the ax-flint they bent,
On the green they had gathered, unpent,
They had gathered beneath the green tent.
There where whitens a pale tree-trunk, naked,
There where whitens a pale linden trunk.
By the linden tree, by the young linden,
By the linden tree, by the young linden,
The linden trunk
White and naked.
At the fore, shaggy, lean, hoar of head,
Moves the wizard, as old as his runes;
He has lived over two thousand moons.
And the ax he inhumed.
From the far lakes he loomed
Long ago.
It is his: at the trunk
The first blow.
And two priestesses in their tenth Spring
To the old one they bring.
In their eyes
Terror lies.
Like the trunk their young bodies are bright,
Their wan white
Hath she only, the tender young linden.
One he took, one he led,
To the trunk roughly wed,
A white bride.
And the ax rose and hissed—
And a voice was upraised
And then died.
Thus the first blow was dealt to the trunk.
Others followed him, others upraised
That age-old bloody ax,
That keen flint-bladed ax:
The flesh once,
The tree twice
Fiercely cleaving.
And the trunk reddened fast
And it took on a face.
Lo,—this notch—is a nose,
This—an eye, for the nonce.
The flesh once,
The trunk twice—
Till all reddened the rise
And the grass crimsoned deep.
On the sod
In the red stains A new god.
"’Yarila’ by Sergey Gorodetzky, is believed to have been an
inspirational source for Stravinsky’s composition. Its narrative
parallels many of the basic elements and archetypes present in ‘The Rite
of Spring’.
At this point we should also ask ourselves: what do we sacrifice for the
attainment of our visions, aesthetic, and ideals? And what is it that
we worship and adore in this age?"
Marcela Giesche
Concept and Direction: Marcela Giesche
Performance: Paul Schulz
Light Design: Pablo Defontavila
Music: Le Sacre du Printemps, Igor Stravinsky
Thank you to: Josef Vorholt Revierfoerster at Mueggelsee for providing
the Trees for the performances. And, Paul Schulz for his love and his
dedication to this collaboration.
Jorge Rodolfo De Hoyos
CONDUIT
"A parade of archetypes dances to the question: to kill or not to kill.
On the altar of individualism, a tribal body sings along to the music."
Jorge Rodolfo De Hoyos
Choreography/Performance: Jorge Rodolfo De Hoyos
in collaboration with: Nir Vidan
Jorge de Hoyos would like to thank the following outside eyes and supporters:
Asaf Aharonson, Gretchen Blegen, Igor Koruga, Anna Lena Lehr, Vladimir
Miller, Ponderosa- Movement & Discovery, Leyla Postalcioglu, Maria
F. Scaroni, Andre Uerba, Julian Weber, Hochschulübergreifendes Zentrum
Tanz (HZT) Berlin
Milla Koistinen
Le Sacre du Printemps, part II
"The proposed piece is a research of chaos and confusion, focusing on
the relation between individual versus community as well on mechanisms
of exclusion and inclusion. Sounds from other sources are intertwined
with the original score of Stravinsky - part II, ‘Le Sacrifice’ -
arising imperceptibly, disappearing, appearing and temporarily taking
over. The choreographic material explores aspects of rituals, madness
and rhythm on and off stage."
Milla Koistinen
Team: Jakob Höglund, Milla Koistinen, Lennart Laberenz, David Lipp
Supported by HAU Hebbel am Ufer, Finnland-Institut, ada Studio
Netta Yerushalmy
The Work of Dance in the Age of Sacred Lives
"In this collaboration between choreographer Netta Yerushalmy and
philosopher David Kishik, the former dances while the latter delivers a
paper. The movement clashes the sensibilities
of primitivism with minimalism, as Yerushalmy cuts the specificities
of Sacre's original choreography and pastes them into this contemporary
composition. Biopolitics, with its strong sacrificial undertones, its
fixation on the body and bare life, stands at the center of Kishik's
essay. This is the context in which Nijinsky’s work achieves its
paradigmatic role, on the threshold between classicism and modernism."
Netta Yerushalmy and David Kishik
Choreographic concept and performance by Netta Yerushalmy
Essay by David Kishik
Essay reading by Daniel Colucciello Barber
Costume by Magdalena Jarkowiec
Kenji Ouellet
Le sacre du printemps – a haptic rite
"A non-visual, haptic choreography that is performed directly on the
body of the visitor. Strongly related to, but not always rooted in
Stravinsky’s music, the piece builds on a vocabulary developed in a row
of previous performances for the touch sense. Some of the previous work
explored cross-sensory sound/touch relationships. The visitors are
blindfolded, not to establish a power relationship but in order to
produce a concentration on other sense modalities. The guest is not
moving actively, concentrating instead on his or her subjective bodily
sensations and architecture. The haptic score offers both a
compositional structure and immediate bodily experience (rather than
kinaesthetic empathy.)"
Kenji Ouellet
Choreography: Kenji Ouellet
Performance: Anna-Luella Zahner and Kenji Ouellet
