Our region’s dance season, paused until the many, robust festivals resume in warmer months, offers several upcoming performance opportunities. Stissing Center brings the highly respected Diana Byer with ballet dancers in a full program of ballet and contemporary works, Kaatsbaan Cultural Park presents the outstanding dance companies Zvidance, Baye and Asa, Kyle Marshall Choreography and Passion Fruit Dance, Jacob’s Pillow includes several performances of Contra Tiempo Activist Dance Theater and Hari Krishnan inDance plus 24/7 accessed Digital Archives, and Catskill Mountain Foundation promotes Ladies of Hip Hop. As part of the Bard College Fisher Concert series, TŌN and members of the Bard College Conservatory Orchestra welcome the vernal equinox with Stravinsky’s 1913 Rite of Spring, Egon Wellesz’ 1911 Vorfrühling (The Dawn of Spring) and Beethoven’s 1808 Symphony No. 6, Pastorale.
The NYC 2023 dance season was impacted by the support and programming of French dance companies by the French government as part of three dance festivals. France is a small country (smaller than the size of Texas), yet its national arts budget is more than double the United States’. In 2022, the French government allocated 4.2 billion euros (roughly $4.5 billion) to the arts, according to the Ministere de la Culture Ministry of Culture, whereas our federal, state, and local funding for the arts totaled $1.85 billion in 2022, according to Grantmakers in the Arts. The French see culture as a ‘wealth for the country’ (Ministry of Culture). Their arts support is formidable. In contrast, why is ours so paltry? Why are the arts a sideline in our culture whereas in numerous nations the arts are central? American choreographers and presenters are heroes, swimming upstream to finance and present dance.
I wrote about or attended seven French presentations including Smaïl Kanouté’s Never Twenty One and L’Étang by Gisèle Vienne both productions also produced at PS21| Center for Contemporary Performance in Chatham, NY. However, the hardest ticket to come by was Senegalese dance artist, Germaine Acogny’s Rite of Spring: common ground(s), a recast of German choreographer Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch’s 1975 Rite of Spring, which in turn was based on the Ballet Russes Vaslav Nijinsky’s 1913 Sacre du Printemps, to the Igor Stravinsky score. The earliest version, a landmark in the history of dance and music, furthered 20th century modernism.
The self-selected sacrificial Chosen, herded by the mob, dances herself to death for the benefit of the community. The original Sacre du Printemps premiered at Théâtre de Champs-Elysées, Paris, (again, France!) famously caused a riot. Stravinsky’s discordant, unremitting, driving and poly-rhythmic score, based on Slavic folk songs, was remixed, and layered, as reviewed by New York Times critic Alex Ross, to be “reassemble(d)…in cubistic collages and montages".
The sound from the audience was so cacophonous (surely riveling the score) that the dancers couldn’t hear the orchestra. Nijinsky ran from the audience to the wings yelling the counts. The ballet, that so offended, with turned-in legs, flat-footed landings, and pounding feet based on Slavic folk dances, was performed nine times in total in the 20th century, and then dropped. When Sergei Diaghilev (the Ballets Russes impresario) tried to revive the production in 1920, it is reported that no one could remember the movement. (This is hard to believe since dance is a visceral tradition passed from one body to the next.) By that time, Nijinsky was housed in a mental institution.
The Ballets Russes never performed in Russia. Homesick, early works such as Rite, recalled the longed-for Russian past. Nostalgia for the Russian soul seems be a Russian birthright, as we currently experience. No fewer than 12 original Rites of Spring, a rite of passage and a testament for famous choreographers, including Martha Graham, Paul Taylor, and Molissa Fenley, have been presented. The Joffrey Ballet, after years of research, approximated the original.
Presented in the cavernous Lexington Avenue Armory that covers a square NYC block, Acogny’s production, was the buzz of the season. Acogny, considered the mother of African concert dance, and longstanding Tanztheater Wuppertal company member, Malou Airaudo, each approaching 80 years, opened with a tender duet, common ground(s), that reflected their respective homelands, Senegal and France, and their shared, long-lived experiences as dancers. Chairs, branches and stones were utilized to plumb, comfort, and support.
The 36 impassioned Africa dancers from 14 African nations, performing Bausch’s raw, darting, furious and spiked Rite of Spring movement, rivets as the thick layer of peat moss covering the stage follows the arc of every jump and stamp of each foot. The dirt smears costumes, faces, chests, arms, and legs, not unlike the 1913 face paint and atavistic costuming. Bausch’s Rite of Spring pits the sexes, as did most of her dances, exploring vulnerability, anger and strength. This African company captures the full tilt fury, fragility and uncertainty until the foretold end.
Check out Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring at Bard to see what all the fuss is about.
Catherine Tharin danced with the Erick Hawkins Dance Company. She teaches dance studies and technique, is an independent dance and performance curator, choreographs, writes about dance for Side of Culture, and is a reviewer and editor for The Dance Enthusiast. She also writes for The Boston Globe. Catherine lives in Pine Plains, New York and New York City.
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