Last Rites: Self-Representation and Counter-Canon Practices in Classical Music through Radhe Radhe

To commemorate the centennial ofthe 1913 Paris premiere of The Rite of Spring, the University of NorthCarolina at Chapel Hill organised The Rite of Spring at 100. As part ofthis, the Carolina Performing Arts (CPA) commissioned new pieces interpretingand responding to The Rite. Among these was Radhe Radhe: Ritesof Holi, created by the Indian-American composer-scholar and pianist VijayIyer, performed by the International Contemporary Ensemble, and accompanied by afilm about Holi—the annual Hindu harvest festival—assembled by filmmakerPrashant Bhargava. Radhe Radhe eventually took the form of a performancedocument mediated between live music and film, as well as culturally divergentnotions of ‘ritual’.   This article will ask, consideringBhargava’s film and Iyer’s score, along with documentation of live chamberperformances of the piece: how does ‘western’ classical music represent itselfin the twenty-first century? In what ways is self-representation performed in anintercultural collaboration such as Radhe Radhe that destabilises thedominant whiteness of the classical music canon by reimagining its soundscapein reference to a canonical work such as The Rite? Radhe Radhe—andIyer’s score in particular—I propose, echoes as a sonic postcolonial ur-textthrough its engagement with Holi. As an instance of the Deleuzian simulacrum,it represents a radical departure from the cultural politics of ‘everyday colonialracism’ (Levitz 2017: 163) surrounding the 1913 Rite, by employing a collaborativevocabulary that resists the hegemonic performance traditions of westernclassical music.

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

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.

Copy Rites

This chapter considers two contemporary versions of The Rite of Spring: Xavier Le Roy’s Le Sacre du Printemps and Jérôme Bel’s self-titled production. Because there is relatively extensive documentation of Nijinsky’s original choreography for the Rite, so-called reconstructions are widely known and available. But Le Roy and Bel seek to reimagine the ballet completely. Le Roy loosely “conducts” the score as it is piped out of speakers placed among the audience, thus inverting the traditional spatial and artistic dimensions of theatrical space. Bel drastically denudes his Rite, with naked dancers, a nearly bare stage, and a flimsy monophonic rendition of the gargantuan score. He embarks on a subcutaneous exploration of a dance performance to discover its most basic constituent parts. In reworking the ballet’s “original” materials, these artists expose some basic assumptions about music and dance as media, both as performance acts and as objects of study.

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

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.

The Rites of Spring

The chapter explores primitivism, African creation myths, and an analysis of Diaghilev’s The Rite of Spring and Vernon Lee’s Satan the Waster in the context of Cunard’s poetic aesthetic. Marcus also contrasts Edith Sitwell’s anti-war Wheels anthology and Cunard’s engagement with African cultures and artifacts with Eliot’s primitivism. Additionally, the chapter investigates the visual primitivism of World War I and representations of the slaughter by William Roberts and Wyndham Lewis.

Categorical Bifurcation: The Rite of Spring at the Threshold of Modernism

Pursuing a new theoretical link between sociology of culture and ‘categorization’ research, the article articulates the process whereby new categories emerge through bifurcation of pre-existing categories. The contribution is in conceptualizing and documenting the underlying interaction of endogenous and exogeneous factors. The assumption is that bifurcation is likely to occur where and when individual practices of contrast maximization interact with the internal tendency toward dichotomization. This form of interaction is instrumental in identifying and explaining ‘thresholds’ in cultural change. The framework is illustrated with the archetype of ‘modern ballet’ – The Rite of Spring, choreographed by Vaslav Nijinsky, staged in 1913. By reversing the codes of ‘classical’ ballet, centered on elegance, lightness and flow, the Rite redefined movement, codifying a language of tension, interruption and constraint. It marked the key moment when a critical part of the audience interpreted ‘bad’ ballet as ‘new’ ballet. The analysis draws parallels with bifurcation processes in physics and system dynamics.