Pauline Adamek
Pina Bausch’s ballet Rite of Spring is coming to The Music Center’s Dorothy Chandler Pavilion this February, interpreting the famous work as a battle of the sexes. Thrillingly, Bausch’s iconic piece will be performed entirely—for the first time ever—by an African dance corps.
More than thirty dancers from 13 African countries are set to make history at The Music Center’s Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, with performances over four nights, February 8-11, 2024.
Production photos credit-Maarten Vanden Abeele.
History:
When Igor Stravinsky composed The Rite of Spring in 1913, it redefined 20th-century music in a dramatic and impactful way. The intensely rhythmic score and primitive scenario shocked audiences at the time. Created both as a ballet and as an orchestral concert work, Stravinsky wrote it expressly for Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes company and their season in Paris.
Stravinsky’s score contained many new features for its time, including experiments in tonality, meter, rhythm, stress and dissonance. The ground-breaking piece is regarded as among the first modernist works, and has influenced many of the 20th-century’s leading composers.
From the press release:
How would you dance, if you knew you were going to die? This is the central question the late choreographer Pina Bausch asked of her dancers in 1975 when she created her seminal work The Rite of Spring. The work examines unyielding ritual when the sacrifice of a “chosen one” changes the season from winter to spring. This pioneering piece, establishing Bausch’s iconic approach, has flourished to become one of the 20th century’s most significant and important works in dance. Faithful to Stravinsky’s visceral score, Bausch’s monumental choreography is given a thrilling new life by a specially assembled company of more than 30 dancers from 13 countries. Dancing on a peat-covered stage, they clash and engage in a poetic struggle of life, ritual and sacrifice that pays tribute to Bausch’s unparalleled genius.
Rite is paired with a new work, common ground[s], created, performed and inspired by the lives of two remarkable women who have each juggled roles as choreographers, professors and grandmothers: Germaine Acogny, the founder of the Senegalese École des Sables, who is widely considered to be “the mother of contemporary African dance,” and Malou Airaudo, who performed leading roles in many of Bausch’s early works as a member of Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch. Their tender choreographic response to Rite reflects their shared histories, emotional experiences and common ground.
Pina Bausch’s ballet Rite of Spring & common ground[s]
The Music Center’s Dorothy Chandler Pavilion
Performances:
Thursday, February 8, 2024, 7:30 p.m.
Friday, February 9, 2024, 7:30 p.m.
Saturday, February 10, 2024, 7:30 p.m.
Sunday, February 11, 2024, 2:00 p.m.
In person – Box Office–(213) 972-0711. Open Tuesday – Saturday, 10:00 a.m. – 6:00 p.m.
Interested in bringing a group to this performance? Learn more about group bookings.
Programs, dates & artists subject to change.
Brian Sonia-Wallace
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