From historical materiality to performance: Choreographic functions of the costumes in The Rite of Spring (1913)

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 9-27 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hanna Järvinen
Keyword(s):  
Past Performance ◽  
Ballets Russes ◽  
Rite Of Spring ◽  
Made In

Examining the surviving costumes of the 1913 production of The Rite of Spring, this article explores how costumes functioned in the Russian ‘new ballet’ choreography, of which the Ballets Russes Company is the most internationally famous example. The materiality of costumes – the fabric, cut and dye – organized the dancing bodies onstage in a manner that, in part, relied on Russian contexts invisible to the predominantly foreign audiences of the performances in Paris and London. Subsequently, these Russian reactions where The Rite of Spring was part of a continuum of representations of Russia’s past have been largely ignored in favour of the opinions of French and British critics, for whom the work appeared extraordinary and alien. The so-called reconstruction (1987), where the surviving costumes were used to compensate for the absence of choreographic understanding, has further obscured what the choreography was and what costumes actually did (and do) in performance. Although decisions made in recreating performance differ from historiographical research, exploring the practical making of costumes also draws attention to perspectives often forgotten in discussions of past performance more generally – such as changes in how costumes are experienced, or what that experience explains of later reminiscences.

The Spanish Reception of Le Sacre du Printemps (1913–1936)

2018 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 48-66
Author(s):  
Idoia Murga Castro
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Spanish Civil War ◽  
Original Work ◽  
Silver Age ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Ballets Russes ◽  
Rite Of Spring ◽  
Le Sacre Du Printemps ◽  
Cultural Expansion

Centenary celebrations are being held between 2016 and 2018 to mark the first consecutive tours of Diaghilev's Ballets Russes in Spain. This study analyses the Spanish reception of Le Sacre du Printemps (The Rite of Spring) (1913), one of its most avant-garde pieces. Although the original work was never performed in Spain as a complete ballet, its influence was felt deeply in the work of certain Spanish choreographers, composers, painters and intellectuals during the so-called Silver Age, the period of modernisation and cultural expansion which extended from the end of the nineteenth century to the beginning of the Spanish Civil War.

Nijinsky, Vaslav (1889–1950)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hanna Järvinen
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Great Influence ◽  
Contemporary Dance ◽  
World War ◽  
Ballets Russes ◽  
Art Form ◽  
Rite Of Spring ◽  
Vaslav Nijinsky ◽  
New Research ◽  
Le Sacre Du Printemps

Vaslav Nijinsky was a Russian dancer and choreographer of Polish descent. He achieved international renown as the star of Serge Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes Company between 1909 and 1916. A dancing prodigy, Nijinsky was lauded as the best male dancer of his generation. From 1912 onwards, his choreographic modernism inaugurated the use of simpler movement language that de-emphasized virtuosity with L’Après-midi d’un Faune (Afternoon of a Faun, 1912), Jeux (1913), Le Sacre du Printemps (The Rite of Spring, 1913) and the little-known Till Eulenspiegel (1916), created during the company’s second North American tour. Nijinsky refocused attention on the choreographer as the author of dance, which had great influence on how dance as an art form was understood and discussed after World War I. Because Nijinsky was institutionalized for mental illness in 1919, none of his choreographies survived intact and were, for decades, considered artistically irrelevant. This attitude began to change in the late 1980s, when new research and reconstructions of Nijinsky’s choreographies helped scholars and audiences to rethink his place in dance history, and his works are now considered to be important examples of modernism as well as precursors to both contemporary ballet and contemporary dance, more generally.

Comedy Ballet as Social Commentary:Till Eulenspiegel(1916)

2014 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 144-184
Author(s):  
Hanna Järvinen
Keyword(s):  
Tone Poem ◽  
Past Performance ◽  
The Past ◽  
Ballets Russes ◽  
Art Form ◽  
Vaslav Nijinsky

In 1916, during the American tours of the Ballets Russes company, Vaslav Nijinsky created a choreography to Richard Strauss's tone poem Till Eulenspiegels lustische Streiche, nach alter Schelmenweise, in Rondo Form (1894–1895). Only performed during the tour, the work was long deemed a failure or an indication of the choreographer's approaching insanity. Tracing the reviews and other contemporary materials, this article asks what can be known of a past performance and rehearsal practice – and what our interpretations of the past reveal of present-day concerns and assumptions about dance as an art form.

Historical materiality of performance: On the costumes of The Rite of Spring (1913)

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 153-173 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hanna Järvinen
Keyword(s):  
Performance Practice ◽  
Critical Examination ◽  
Methodological Pluralism ◽  
Work Of Art ◽  
Ballets Russes ◽  
Rite Of Spring ◽  
Historical Performance

By focusing on surviving costumes of the 1913 production of The Rite of Spring, this article asks how a close examination of costumes and their role in historical performance practice can change our understanding of a canonical work of art. It argues for methodological pluralism in examining material remains together with manuscript annotations, images and reviews of the production rarely considered in previous research and, consequentially, for a critical examination of all previous claims, including the so-called reconstruction (1987) of The Rite of Spring. Compared with designs and costumes of other productions by the Ballets Russes company, those of the 1913 production explain much of the contradictory ways in which the work figured in discourses relating to art and modernism in France and Russia at the time. Most importantly, the costumes exemplify a particular tradition of making theatre that has been obscured by the prevailing Orientalist view of the Ballets Russes company that is hegemonic in what is claimed to be ‘known’ about The Rite of Spring and its reception.

Modernism on Stage: The Ballets Russes and the Parisian Avant-Garde

2014 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 96-103
Author(s):  
Hanna Järvinen
Keyword(s):  
Art History ◽  
Interdisciplinary Studies ◽  
Set Design ◽  
Total Work ◽  
Past Performance ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Ballets Russes ◽  
Art Form ◽  
Interdisciplinary Scholarship ◽  
A Company

From the outset, I have to admit I am partial to new scholarship on the Ballets Russes, particularly interdisciplinary scholarship that offers new perspectives on staged dance as an art form. Hence, two recent books on a company famous for striving for the total work of art effect sounded like an absolute feast. I may have set my expectations high, but these books actually exemplify how easily dance becomes secondary to music and set design in discussions of past performance, and how “interdisciplinary” studies often are anything but. In both books, the analyses offered of dance are, for a dance scholar, implausible, specious, even outright incomprehensible, and the dance-related topic emerges as servile to agendas of other disciplines, namely those of music and art history.

Degrees of Separation: Lester Horton’s

Experiment ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 48-85
Author(s):  
Lorin Johnson
Keyword(s):  
Los Angeles ◽  
American Indian ◽  
West Coast ◽  
Professional Relationships ◽  
Ballets Russes ◽  
Rite Of Spring ◽  
Russian Modernism ◽  
Indian Dance ◽  
Le Sacre Du Printemps

This essay examines Lester Horton’s 1937 production of Le Sacre du printemps (The Rite of Spring) at the Hollywood Bowl. In particular, the genesis of the work and the transference of Russian modernism in 1930s Los Angeles is explored. The essay focuses on Horton’s professional relationships with two artists in Los Angeles, Adolph Bolm and Michio Ito, both of whom were in his proximity as teachers, mentors and colleagues when he created Le Sacre. The Russian émigré Bolm, a former dancer with the Ballets Russes during the period Nijinsky choreographed The Rite of Spring in 1913, was a well-established teacher and choreographer in Los Angeles. Bolm’s and Horton’s parallel interests in American Indian dance forms are discussed. Ito, the Japanese dancer and choreographer who was inspired to pursue dance after witnessing performances of the Ballets Russes, trained in Dalcroze Eurhythmics in Hellerau before settling in Los Angeles in 1929. Horton’s production of Le Sacre, the seventh created internationally and first West Coast version is discussed in detail, drawing on the choreographer’s rehearsal notes and other first-hand accounts.

Spectrophotometric measurements of objective-prism spectra

1966 ◽  
Vol 24 ◽  
pp. 118-119
Author(s):  
Th. Schmidt-Kaler
Keyword(s):  
Progress Report ◽  
Two Dimensional ◽  
Objective Prism ◽  
Made In

I should like to give you a very condensed progress report on some spectrophotometric measurements of objective-prism spectra made in collaboration with H. Leicher at Bonn. The procedure used is almost completely automatic. The measurements are made with the help of a semi-automatic fully digitized registering microphotometer constructed by Hög-Hamburg. The reductions are carried out with the aid of a number of interconnected programmes written for the computer IBM 7090, beginning with the output of the photometer in the form of punched cards and ending with the printing-out of the final two-dimensional classifications.

Surface Structure in Microtomed Sections Caused by Glass and Diamond Knives

1971 ◽  
Vol 29 ◽  
pp. 456-457
Author(s):  
J. Temple Black ◽  
William G. Boldosser
Keyword(s):  
Plastic Deformation ◽  
Epoxy Resin ◽  
Carbon Coating ◽  
Surface Damage ◽  
Body Angle ◽  
Normal Manner ◽  
Bottom Side ◽  
Cutting Direction ◽  
Made In ◽  
Diamond Knife

Ultramicrotomy produces plastic deformation in the surfaces of microtomed TEM specimens which can not generally be observed unless special preparations are made. In this study, a typical biological composite of tissue (infundibular thoracic attachment) infiltrated in the normal manner with an embedding epoxy resin (Epon 812 in a 60/40 mixture) was microtomed with glass and diamond knives, both with 45 degree body angle. Sectioning was done in Portor Blum Mt-2 and Mt-1 microtomes. Sections were collected on formvar coated grids so that both the top side and the bottom side of the sections could be examined. Sections were then placed in a vacuum evaporator and self-shadowed with carbon. Some were chromium shadowed at a 30 degree angle. The sections were then examined in a Phillips 300 TEM at 60kv.Carbon coating (C) or carbon coating with chrom shadowing (C-Ch) makes in effect, single stage replicas of the surfaces of the sections and thus allows the damage in the surfaces to be observable in the TEM. Figure 1 (see key to figures) shows the bottom side of a diamond knife section, carbon self-shadowed and chrom shadowed perpendicular to the cutting direction. Very fine knife marks and surface damage can be observed.

Iron storage sites in the myocardium as revealed by cytohistochemistry

1988 ◽  
Vol 46 ◽  
pp. 394-395
Author(s):  
M. Ashraf ◽  
F. Thompson ◽  
S. Miki ◽  
P. Srivastava
Keyword(s):  
Cardiac Tissue ◽  
Coronary Perfusion ◽  
Intracellular Iron ◽  
Ether Anesthesia ◽  
Intense Staining ◽  
Iron Storage ◽  
Thin Sections ◽  
Rat Hearts ◽  
Cacodylate Buffer ◽  
Made In

Iron is believed to play an important role in the pathogenesis of ischemic injury. However, the sources of intracellular iron in myocytes are not yet defined. In this study we have attempted to localize iron at various cellular sites of the cardiac tissue with the ferrocyanide technique.Rat hearts were excised under ether anesthesia. They were fixed with coronary perfusion with 3% buffered glutaraldehyde made in 0.1 M cacodylate buffer pH 7.3. Sections, 60 μm in thickness, were cut on a vibratome and were incubated in the medium containing 500 mg of potassium ferrocyanide in 49.5 ml H2O and 0.5 ml concentrated HC1 for 30 minutes at room temperature. Following rinses in the buffer, tissues were dehydrated in ethanol and embedded in Spurr medium.The examination of thin sections revealed intense staining or reaction product in peroxisomes (Fig. 1).

Microanalysis of precipitates in a ferritic steel

1978 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 618-619
Author(s):  
J.M. Titchmarsh
Keyword(s):  
Ferritic Steel ◽  
Particle Identification ◽  
Energy Dispersive ◽  
Objective Lens ◽  
Ferritic Steels ◽  
Replica Technique ◽  
X Ray ◽  
Large Numbers ◽  
Scanning Transmission ◽  
Made In

The advances in recent years in the microanalytical capabilities of conventional TEM's fitted with probe forming lenses allow much more detailed investigations to be made of the microstructures of complex alloys, such as ferritic steels, than have been possible previously. In particular, the identification of individual precipitate particles with dimensions of a few tens of nanometers in alloys containing high densities of several chemically and crystallographically different precipitate types is feasible. The aim of the investigation described in this paper was to establish a method which allowed individual particle identification to be made in a few seconds so that large numbers of particles could be examined in a few hours.A Philips EM400 microscope, fitted with the scanning transmission (STEM) objective lens pole-pieces and an EDAX energy dispersive X-ray analyser, was used at 120 kV with a thermal W hairpin filament. The precipitates examined were extracted using a standard C replica technique from specimens of a 2¼Cr-lMo ferritic steel in a quenched and tempered condition.

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