On the 29th of May 1912, exactly a year earlier than the premiere of The Rite of Spring, Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes had scandalized Parisian audiences with the first performance of another
Prehistoric Ballets: L’Après Midi d’un Faune as precursor of The Rite of Spring
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famous ballet choreographed by Nijinsky – L’Après-midi d’un Faune. This ballet represents a precursor for The Rite of Spring not only for this chronological correspondence, success, notoriety, and choreography by Nijinsky: both works also drew some inspiration from a rather distant prehistoric past, as shown by the sets and costumes created by Léon Bakst and Nicholas Roerich (for Faune and Rite, respectively). This paper discusses Bakst’s use of prehistoric materials for the Faune and previous Ballets Russes productions, and how this related to his ideas about a modern art of the future.
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The premiere at the Théâtre des Champs Élysées in Paris on 29 May 1913 of The Rite of Spring Scenes from Pagan Russia was a quintessential ‘total work of art’. An interdisciplinary, international one-day conference was organized by Dr Claire O’Mahony (University of Oxford) in May 2013 which examined the cross-fertilizations between ballet and design in the creation of the original production as well its critical reception and global legacies up to the 2013 centenary productions. Fifteen...
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