Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun and The Rite of Spring

THE RITE OF SPRING

In Marie Chouinard’s work, The Rite of Spring occupies a special position. In choosing to re-examine this powerful hymn to life, she has created her first choreography based on a musical score. Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring explores a New World and marks the entry of dance into modernity. In this avant-garde work, Marie Chouinard again finds an original pulsation that is essential to her movement. Far from contradicting the rhythm of her dance, the cadence and force of the music inspire, accompany and energize her, forming both the echo and the musical counterpoint of an organic, vigorous and vivid choreography.

There is no story in my Rite- no development, no cause and effect. Only synchronicity. It is as if I were dealing with the very moment after the instant life first appeared. The performance is the unfolding of that moment. I have the feeling that before that moment there was an extraordinary burst of light, a flash of lightning.

Marie Chouinard

Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun

When he wrote the Afternoon of a Faun in 1876, Stéphane Mallarmé fulfilled a dream: to write poetry for the theatre. The poem’s musicality inspired Claude Debussy to compose Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun in 1894. In 1912, in Paris, Vaslav Nijinski created his first choreography, based on Mallarmé’s poem. In it, he gave life – intense and sensual life – to his own raw and animalistic erotic nature, thereby abruptly breaking with classical tradition.

This show contains partial nudity.
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