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RITES REDONE: Edgar Zendejas updates Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring with contemporary choreography.
reneWIng a revolutIon
a
sked to name the 20th century’s most Ground. Rodney Gustafson, founding and revolutionary work of art, different artistic director of SSB, has invited Zendejas people will give different answers. If, back this year and charged him with creating while you are debating this question, you a Rite of Spring for the 21st century. put on Igor Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring in the Through years of dedication, constant background, you may continue the conver- touring, continuing education, and hard sation. But somewhere around minute 10 work, SSB has become the kind of company or 11 of the first movement, it is likely you on which something as ambitious as this will stop. We have a winner, and it is Rite of new Rite can be set. Watching them rehearse Spring. There are other contenders—Picasso’s in the studio last week, I was struck by the “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon” and James rapport that has developed among the dancJoyce’s Ulysses to name two — but nothing ers through their years of extensive interoutshines the brilliance national experience. of Stravinsky’s dazzling Zendejas’s distinctive musical gesture, which movement vocabuthe composer himself lary derives in part described as “a sacred from the great ballet terror in the noonday and circus compasun.” Stravinsky calinies he has worked brated his composition’s with in his adopted brash style perfectly to home of Montreal; express the dawning of it also conveys an by Charles Donelan a new era in society. urgency I associate Rite of Spring’s May with the hard task of 1913 premiere famously set off a riot among finding one’s place in another country and the tres branché audience at the Théâtre des culture. For the dancers, investing in this colChamps-Elysées in Paris, and while historians laboration with Zendejas means committing often cite Stravinsky’s music as its cause, the to the choreographer’s double consciousness evening’s choreography by Vaslav Nijinsky with an electrifying immediacy. was just as provocative. From the beginning, Saturday night’s program includes two Rite of Spring was a composite work requiring other works, both of which will complemovement as well as sound to complete its ment the Zendejas/Stravinsky piece. William meaning. By asking the dancers of the Ballets Soleau’s “Five by Gershwin” uses music drawn Russes to go beyond their classical training in from the immediate aftermath of the Rite search of realistic movement and dark drama, revolution and is one of the company’s most Nijinsky discovered a potent formula: Set consistent crowd-pleasers. Kassandra Taylor cutting-edge contemporary choreography Newberry’s “(con)version” was a highlight of on classically trained ballet dancers, add great last spring’s Women’s Work program at the modern music, and voilà! You have the opti- New Vic. mal conditions for a fashionable riot. Stravinsky’s intention was to score a pagan This Saturday, February 18, State Street Bal- ritual for modernity that would capture the let (SSB) revives Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring in creative spirit of his Russian homeland. Asked the most authentic way possible by offering to sum up the story he is telling through a new version with original choreography this version, Zendejas answered, “As indiby an artist who is as attuned to society circa viduals, we look for springtime in our lives, 2017 as Nijinsky and Sergei Diaghilev were to for renewal and the rebirth of our desire, but the European zeitgeist of 1913. Edgar Zendejas at what cost do we obtain this?” That is what made his Santa Barbara debut last season with Rite of Spring is about, and it’s a question that the ambitious collaborative feature Common could hardly have come at a better time.
state street ballet
ChoreoGraPhs
rIte oF sprIng for today
Santa BarbaraNIndependent ! Arlington Theatre Billy Crystal The S O/W T O 4.583” x 6.166” • Black and White E col: 1/4 Page-2 CKLE N I Nederlander Concerts T A S Pub Date: Thursday, February 16, 2017
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ARLINGTON THEATRE February 25th • 7pm Buy tickets at The Arlington Theatre box office or Ticketmaster.com
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State Street Ballet performs Rite of Spring at the Granada Theatre (1214 State St.) on Saturday, February 18, at 7:30 p.m. For tickets and information, visit statestreetballet.com or call 899-2222. independent.com
FEbruary 16, 2017
THE INDEPENDENT
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