RITE OF SPRING 




The haunting first sounds of Stravinsky’s music that caused such a stir in 1912 when the Ballet Russe first danced to it, Jill Eathorne Bahr’s Matriarch sensuously awakens.
 
Different from the 1913 Paris "scandale", with the legendary Nijinsky leading pagan rituals, this production reaches further back in fantasy, to the beginning of time, a matriarchy dominated by a solo figure. A dirt pile reveals the First Man, His male coterie - aliens -overwhelm the women.

Finally the First Man seduces the matriarch as drum rolls, eerie woodwinds, and yards of fish netting swaddle the result. The offspring, called The Chosen One, eventually falls for papa and kills mama. Birth, rebirth, redemption.
Ashes to ashes.
A story, which tells of how sin and its consequences can destroy relationships and an entire community; and yet the people's need for a community drives them to keep re-creating, despite the dark past, Bahr’s intensity of the lust and anger-filled tableau, has become one of the milestones in Bahr’s choreographic career.
 
WORLD PREMIERE: 1993
Principals: 2 female, 1 male
Corp: 10 women, 10 men
Can be produced with 6 men, 8, men, 9 men and equal number of ladies