 I couldn't find a real monocle. Hello and welcome back to Dapper History Fancy Edition. Today we will be talking about the sacred time-honored art of ballet, but specifically one ballet that was so controversial that on its premiere it caused a riot. That's right! Today we are talking about Igor Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring. So before we get into what made this ballet so significant, we got to talk about what is ballet exactly? Ballet is an artistic dance form performed to music using precise and highly formalized set steps and gestures. Basically it's a form of storytelling, but the story can only be told using very specific dance moves set to one specific musical score. Honestly if you actually want to understand what ballet is, like watch Black Swan. Ballet is one of the most gruellingly strict art forms out there and it is also one of the most prestigious. Historically only super-duper rich people could afford to actually see ballets. The poor people just had to stand outside and look at the poster. Now that we know what ballet is, let's meet the man who is crazy enough to break every rule of it. Ladies and gentlemen, Igor Stravinsky. Our main character for the evening, Igor Stravinsky, was born in Russia June 17, 1882. Brace yourselves, he's a German eye. Igor was wildly talented and interested in music from a young age, but his parents were against him pursuing his dreams. No son of mine will be an artist making ballets, composing silly songs for women in tutus to dance to is what I assume his father said, you will study law and be just another brick in the wall. And that's what he did. But in 1902 while studying law, Igor made friends with Vladimir Rinsky Korsakov, son of the well-established composer Nikol Kairinsky Korsakov. Name just rolls off the tongue doesn't it? This friendship reignited Igor's love for music. But ultimately Igor's father passed away in 1902. It was around this time Igor said, fuck law school and he began studying music under Mr. Rimsky Korsakov. Before he knew it, he was writing compositions, networking within the Russian ballet industry, and marrying his first cousin. Nothing could stop him. For a good while Igor was composing mostly smaller works here and there, but in 1910 an opportunity came knocking. He was approached by Sergei Dyagilev, a very important rich guy in the Russian art scene. Dyagilev asked him to take on a hefty challenge and compose an entire orchestration for a new ballet, The Firebird, based on the Russian fairy tale of the same name. Now Igor was talented in all but this was a big challenge for him. This would be his first major commission, much longer than anything he had written before. Not only that but he would have to complete it on very short notice in order for the ballet to open in time. And yet he did it! 50 minutes of music that effectively told the narrative of The Firebird. But what did the critics think? The Firebird was a triumph. The critics loved it and it was especially praised for its incredible score. Word of Firebird spread across Europe to all the big artistic hotspots of the world. Most excitingly, Paris. Overnight Igor went from being just some guy who married his first cousin to being the new rising star of the ballet world. But of course, all was not well. Okay, brace yourselves. This is the part where I am going to try to grossly oversimplify the attitudes and relations of people and cultures that I am not familiar with. I want to stress that all of this is just generalizations. But I want to say I didn't make this shit up. I found all these attitudes reflected throughout my research. If you want to chalk up everything I'm about to say to me being a stupid American, then that's fine. Go for it. I'm probably hotter than you anyway. Like I said, I'm not European. But according to my research, at least in the 1910s, there was a problem of elitism in certain countries. Europe is a beautifully diverse continent. But like with sports teams or cliques in high school, differences aren't always seen as beautiful. In the 1910s, some, not all, Europeans believed that certain cultures and countries were simply better than others. Countries like France or Italy were seen as being more refined, dignified, beautiful. Whereas countries like Russia or Serbia were stereotyped as being dangerous, primitive, or trashy. There's an argument to be made that these attitudes had more to do with classism than nationalism. But one way or another, the Parisian ballet audiences of the 1910s were not expecting to see a Russian making high art. As Firebird Fever reached Paris, even the most snobbish aristocrats couldn't deny Stravinsky's talent. But that didn't stop them from finding other ways of looking down at him. As his popularity grew to a wider and wider audience, the compliments he received began being laced with microaggressions or backhanded insults. They started to sound like, have you heard of that new Stravinsky? Yes, that Russian boy who composed Firebird. Yes, yes, he's really quite talented. But one of those people. Despite openly looking down their noses at Igor, these same aristocrats were demanding to see more from him. It's a phenomenon that's all too common, even today, where audiences demand entertainment from an artist while openly disrespecting the artist as a person. Igor, being a proud Russian, had enough of this. While composing his new original ballet, his mindset was, you think I'm primitive? Bitch, I'll show you primitive. When word got out that Stravinsky was making a brand new ballet, the excitement was huge. And it was set to premiere at the brand-spanking new Theatre des Champs-Elysées in Paris. Yeah, that's right. I'm one of the people who decided to take French in high school. Do I regret it? Yes. Igor quickly cobbled together a ragtag group of Russian weirdos to perfectly execute his vision. There were three main creative minds behind the rate of spring. First up, we got Igor, of course, the young, talented cousin-marrier who wants to stick it to the aristocrats who looked down on him for his nationality. Next, Nicholas Rerek was brought on board as set and costume designer. Nicholas was also an expert on Russian folklore and history. Together, the two of them came up with a ballet, telling the story of ancient Slavic tribespeople showcasing their culture and rituals. Last but not least, the male ballerina, Vaslav Nizhinsky, was put in charge of choreography. Three words to describe Vaslav were talented, intense, and Slavic. But these three geniuses worked perfectly together. Each of them had a clear vision for the rite of spring, and none of them were willing to compromise even a little, leading to a kind of tedious creation process. First, let's talk about the music. The composition for the rite of spring was unusual in a lot of ways. When composing, Igor didn't want it to sound polished. He wanted it to sound as intense, powerful, and imperfect as nature itself. When reading through the music for the first time, many musicians tried to point out to Stravinsky what they believed to be mistakes in the score, and each time he responded, there are no mistakes. Play what I wrote. Throughout the score, the chords are dissonant and clashing. The time signature is almost constantly changing throughout the piece, giving the feeling that the entire orchestra is off beat. Certain instruments were instructed to play notes way out of their usual range. It's just bonkers. Igor had deliberately and meticulously written a score to sound disorganized and unpolished. It's genius! He also made the process extra difficult by re-reading large chunks of the score right up until opening night. Now, let's talk about the dancing. Nijinsky went against everything he knew about ballet in order to make the perfect choreography. Traditionally, ballerinas have this very specific silhouette and look to be as beautiful and graceful as possible, while Nijinsky threw all that out the window. Rather than staying on their toes and looking lighter than air, the dancers were instructed to land flat on their feet with each jump. Rather than standing tall in slender, their postures were hunched heavy, angular. I mean, we're depicting ancient Slavic fieldworkers, you know? They weren't standing on their tiptoes. And to keep the vibe as organic and unpolished as possible, they were told to occasionally be deliberately off beat. Just like the composition, the choreography was full of these tiny intentional mistakes throughout, making it look wild and unplanned. You might even call it primitive. My personal favorite part of the choreography is when the dancers just flail their arms in the air and start hitting their heads. It's metal as hell. It's fantastic. Now, on to the costumes. From our modern perspective, the costumes are arguably the least outrageous part of the Rite of Spring. They were, to put it simply, authentic ancient Slavic clothing. Nicholas had every detail perfect, from the face paint to the hair to the patterns on their clothes. They weren't obscene or offensive. They were just different. But that is just as bad. Traditionally, the image of a ballerina is just as important as their dancing ability, if not more so. There is such a power to that iconic classic silhouette. Like, even if you couldn't afford tickets to the ballet, you still knew what a ballerina was supposed to look like. Tall, slender, sharp, pointed, all under a skin tightly attached, showing every curve and fold of the human form. And Nicholas's costumes looked nothing like that. Their silhouettes were boxy and shapeless. Loose tunics fell below their knees. The dancers' legs were swaddled in thick boots and leggings. Very practical for surviving the Russian winter. But for the most prestigious art form in the world? Oh, preposterous. The music, dance, and costumes work together to create one of the most complicated, innovative, frustrating, and beautiful creative processes of all time. But enough about that. It's 1913, and opening night is drawing nearer. Ladies and gentlemen, take your seats, fill your champagne, and polish your monocles for the show is about to begin. Now at this point, I told you everything about the Rite of Spring, except what the Rite of Spring is about. So here's my attempt at a plot summary. Before the curtain even rises, there's this absolutely insane introduction, featuring a bassoon soloist playing way higher than its usual range. We're introduced to this tribe as they celebrate the coming of springtime. Not only was the setting very foreign to the Parisian audience, but very little about the society and its people is ever explained, leaving the whole ballet shrouded in mystery. Igor wanted the audience to feel like outsiders looking in. We are voyeurs witnessing something that is obviously much bigger than us, that we can't even begin to understand. We can only gather from the dancer's reactions that whatever is happening before us is extremely important and inevitable. Honestly, it's kind of amazing how much worldbuilding Igor managed to fit in by simply not saying anything. Okay, my mini review aside, we meet an elderly woman, a mystic, who warns the group about her visions of the future. I guess now's as good a time as any to tell you what the Rite in the Rite of Spring actually is. Basically, every spring, these people must sacrifice a female virgin in order to ensure a fruitful and up harvest for them to survive this next winter. We see a group of adolescent girls dancing by a river before they are abducted for, you know what. A large amount of the first act is dedicated to simply showing the different rituals and practices of these people, ranging from friendly competitions to blessings of the earth. Act two of the ballet is titled The Sacrifice, which is bad news for our group of adolescent girls. Oh, speak of the devil! This next part is a bit hard to explain, much like the rest of the show, but I'll try my best. The adolescent girls begin performing this really intricate, elaborate group dance that goes on for a really long time. This represents a game the girls play each year to determine who has to be the sacrifice. Again, the details of the game are shrouded in mystery, but from what I can gather, it's some sort of test of endurance. It's kind of like the opposite of that dance game they play in mid-summer, where the girls have to keep this tedious dance up, and the first girl who falters twice loses and is the sacrifice. Those rules seem kind of arbitrary and unfair, but fuck, why do I know? I'm just an outsider looking in. Anyway, this exhausting looking dance goes on and on until finally one of the girls falls for a second time. Our poor sacrifice is thrown into the center of the circle as the other girls dance giddily around her celebrating that they are safe for at least another year. The acting in the choreography in this section is honestly quite remarkable. The way that the chosen one stands frozen in this rigid, slumped posture for such a long time conveys so many feelings of the young girl, terror, exhaustion, grief, reverence. I think it's beautiful. After a few more rituals, the sacrifice begins. Surrounded by elders, the child dances herself to death in what I can only describe as the most insane dance solo of all time. It's really impressive how Nijinsky was able to choreograph a dance to look this painful. It's excruciating just to watch. Not to keep gushing, but I think the most incredible part of this solo is that you watch the dancer run out of breath, run out of energy, and start stumbling and getting more tired as she's performing it. By the end, both the dancer and the character she's playing are completely exhausted. It's scary, it's powerful, it's beautiful, it's sad, all at the same time it's the perfect ending to this ballet. Now that you know what the Red of Spring looks like, let's see the audiences of 1913 experience it for the first time. Okay, let's set the scene. 1913. Paris. Opening night. The dazzling new Théâtre de Chantelise is open and the house is packed. The air is buzzing with excitement to see Stravinsky's new work. Nothing could possibly go wrong. Now you already know that the majority of the audience were these snobbish Parisian socialites expecting a conventional ballet. But wait, I have yet to tell you the final ingredient to what is about to be a horrible shit show. You see, a subsection of the audience were made up of these artsy contrarians referred to as the aesthetic crowd. I guess the most accurate way to describe them would be Bohemians. They were basically these edgy liberal art beatniks who were desperate to go against the status quo every chance they got. Ironically though, there isn't much difference between the Bohemians and the rest of the audience. Despite how desperately they wanted to be different and stick it to the mainstream, it's not like these guys were poor. You had to be rich in order to get into the theater in the first place. Anyway, I just bring those guys up because we're going to be hearing about them later. The lights go down, the crowd goes quiet, the show finally begins. Now as you might have guessed from the intro of this video, this night is going to eventually end in a riot. But it doesn't start as a riot. It starts as the audience giggling. Right from the beginning of the intro, as they heard a bassoon solo being played way higher than its typical range, the audience just didn't really know what to make of it. It's hard to fully explain how revolutionarily different this type of composition was in the world of ballet. They had literally never heard anything like it. As the intro goes on, and it's full of those intentional mistakes and instruments imitating animal sounds, the audience's giggling turns to snarky whispers. The aristocrats of Paris are trying to figure out what's going on. Why does the music sound so stupid? Is this a joke? Is it a comedy? It must be, right? Only as the audience lays their eyes on these primitive looking people in their primitive looking clothes, doing their clumsy, clumpy, stompy dances that they realize that this is not a joke. I can just imagine someone in the audience going, wait, this is the actual ballet? Like this is the whole thing? The absolute last straw was when the female ballerinas playing the adolescent girls shuffle on stage in their thick shapeless tunics with their crooked bowlegged stance. It was just so different from the classical correct image of a ballerina. The audience just couldn't take it anymore. Now, do I have a personal theory that the real reason why this is what caused the riot is because the female dancers were completely covered up, and thus the audience couldn't objectify them in a way that they were used to doing to female ballerinas? Yes. And that's all I'm going to say about that. The aristocrats in the balcony couldn't stand it anymore, and they got to their feet and started screaming in disgust, shouting insults at the dancers and the composer, some even throwing things at the stage, trying to stop it from going on even a second longer. They saw this as being an insult, not only to the audience, but to ballet as an art form. They cried to stop the show. This isn't just bad ballet. This isn't ballet at all. This is an art. Right on cue, the bohemians come in, seeing a new opportunity to go against the status quo, and they start screaming, genius! It's genius! This is the best ballet I've ever seen! Backstage, pandemonia was ensuing, as Igor commanded the orchestra to keep playing until the fucking end. He would not let these aristocratic assholes tell him what was and wasn't art. Meanwhile, in the audience, the aristocrats and the bohemians continued to battle to determine which one of them was more unbearable. This is how I imagine their conversation sounded. What in propriety is this this disgusting display is not art? Yes it is! It's genius! It's the best art I've ever seen! You wouldn't keep your mouth shut if you know what's good for you. You're just like my dad! The audience's fighting was so loud that they drowned out the entire orchestra, making it impossible for the dancers to hear the music that they needed to dance to. Luckily, Najinsky, being stubborn as ever, kept the show going by standing in the sidelines and screaming out the counts of music so the dancers could continue. Eventually, the screaming fights of the audience turned into physical fights, as the aristocrats and the bohemians began slapping and shoving and hitting each other. It was such hoopla that the police had to drag people out of the theater. Rich people! The story goes that even as these people were being dragged out by police, they continued to scream to their enemies, scheduling dates and times to have duels to settle this once and for all. It's a shame that at the premiere of The Rite of Spring, the audience saw hardly any of The Rite of Spring. It took so little for them to be pushed over the edge. Now, if I were some intellectual, I would make some statement on how ironic it is that the aristocrats had to resort to beating the shit out of people just like the primitive savages they compared Igor to. But I am not an intellectual, so I am going to say, world stop! Now, this has less to do with the ballet itself, but I still find it interesting. While I was doing research on The Rite of The Rite of Spring, I noticed that there were a lot, like a lot of conflicting reports about what happened. Some say that it was a riot, some say it was a bloodbath, some say it was a near riot, not nearly as bad as others make it out to be. Some say that people in the balcony were throwing things at the stage, others say that never happened. Some sources say that the conflict was just yelling and it never escalated to actual violence. Some sources say, I got my ass beaten at theater! And this is kind of weird and it makes determining what actually happened that night difficult. But my belief is that all of these testimonies are at least somewhat true. I mean, everything we know about what happened that night in the theater is based on dozens and dozens of eyewitness reports from people in the audience in the pit orchestra on stage, backstage. So it makes sense that all these people had wildly varying experiences throughout the theater. Like I bet the people who say it never actually escalated to violence say that because they didn't see any violence. Where the people who said that it did escalate to violence were either beating someone's ass, getting their ass beat, or standing right by someone getting their ass beat. The people who said that nothing ever got thrown at the stage probably just never saw anything get thrown at the stage. And yeah, a lot of these people were also probably exaggerating. That happens anytime anything interesting happens. Again, this section doesn't have anything to do with the ballet itself, but I just find it very important as a person who's interested in history. We need to remember when we're doing research on stuff that happened a hundred years ago that dozens, if not hundreds of people, have different experiences with the same event. So yeah, uh, Skrivinski's first independent debut was the shit show to end all shit shows. But don't think that discouraged him. A while after the premiere, after everyone had had a chance to just, just calm down, just take a breath for a second. Skrivinski re-premiered the Rite of Spring this time as a standalone orchestral piece without the dancers. This time around, the audience had a much more positive response to it. They appreciated Skrivinski's work for being a breath of fresh air. It was something new in avant-garde. It wasn't an insult to the traditions, it was just different than the traditions. I'm glad that Skrivinski got the recognition he deserved and that this didn't, like, destroy his career. He went on to make several other very successful pieces. But I still can't help but be a bit sad that the ballet of the Rite of Spring could only be appreciated when the ballet aspect was taken out of it. I think I made it clear in this video that I love the choreography of the Rite of Spring. I think it's the best part of the entire show. I really do think that Igor Nicholas and Velslav were the dream team of Russian ballet, and they worked together to make the perfect end product. And I really do think that it's incomplete with any aspect of it missing. I've also seen some recordings of modern renditions of the Rite of Spring with updated costumes, and honestly, I don't think it looked as good as the original. In years to come after the premiere, the choreography and costumes were eventually acknowledged as having merit as well. But fuck, man. Like, why can't everyone be intellectual artists like me? I think the story of the Rite of Spring, including its creation and disaster's premiere, are super important. Not just for telling us an interesting story and history, but reminding us how different attitudes and different perspectives affect the way that we perceive objective truth, and the way that the story of that objective truth is remembered for years to come. This, for me, is like the be-all and all of whack-ass history stories. I find it so endlessly fascinating. I get so endlessly worked up about it. Obviously, in 1913, no one recorded the original premiere, but I highly urge you to look up recreations of the original Rite of Spring, including the choreography, score, and costumes. It's fantastic. It's fucking great. Even if ballet isn't your thing, I still think you can get a lot of enjoyment out of it, even if it's just in a contrary bohemian way. And with that, I would like to say thank you so much for watching. Subscribe if you want to. Don't, if you don't, more whack shit is coming soon, and I'll see you next whenever I upload. Bye!