- Title
- Unnatural Movements: Modernism’s shaping of intimate relations in Stravinsky’s Le sacre du printemps
- Creator
- Duffy, Michelle; Atkinson, Paul
- Date
- 2014
- Type
- Text; Journal article
- Identifier
- http://researchonline.federation.edu.au/vital/access/HandleResolver/1959.17/155915
- Identifier
- vital:11318
- Identifier
- ISSN: 2202-9885
- Abstract
- The emotions aroused in response to the 1913 premiere of Le sacre du printemps are well recorded. The complex percussive and rhythmic elements of Igor Stravinsky’s score and their embodiment in Vaslav Nijinsky’s angular and earth-bound choreography were received by hisses and catcalls so loud the members of the orchestra could not hear one another, and nor could members of the ballet corps hear the orchestra and remain in sync. While such responses could be attributed to the shock of the new—that is, the shock of a dance that did not conform to expectations of what constitutes a traditional (romantic) balletic performance—this paper suggests that this reaction is also attributable to the ballet’s modernist aesthetic. This aesthetic created affective movements that constituted a new form of absolute dance, one that focuses on the body as the source of dramatic tension, and moves beyond ballet’s traditional representation of emotional and narrative content. We suggest that in Nijinsky’s realisation of the ballet there is an affective relationship in the movement of bodies that exceeds the representational and programmatic structure of the work as well as the assumed boundaries of the dancers’ bodies.
- Relation
- Affirmations: of the Modern Vol. 1, no. 2 (2014), p. 95-119
- Rights
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
- Rights
- Open Access
- Rights
- This metadata is freely available under a CCO license
- Subject
- Dance; Choreography
- Full Text
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