The 1913 Paris premiere of Le Sacre du printemps in ballet's most notorious opening night, a succes de scandale that turned the Theatre Champs Elysees into Bedlam. (Amid the catcallers and chair bangers, the choreographer's mother fainted in her seat; a single-minded Pierre Monteux continued to conduct his orchestra while the producer demanded from his box that the clamorous audience let the show go on.) Four more performances in Paris, perhaps three in London, and that was that. The Diaghilev Ballets Russes production of Vaslav Nijinsky's ballet vanished.
The New York premiere of the Joffrey Ballet's reconstructed Sacre almost seventy-five years later was the occasion of a gathering of dance critics and historians from around the world and a conference devoted to Sacre studies. Robert Joffrey succeeded in his lifetime in doing what Serge Diaghilev could not do in his: He made Sacre a box office hit. His production was the most longed for, talked about, and debated revival in the history of dance.
It was his penultimate achievement. Already in failing health when Sacre came to City Center in the fall, the founder and director of the Joffrey Ballet was bedridden by the time his new Nutcracker--his last production--first worked its wintry spell. He died March 25, 1988, at 57 a beloved figure throughout the dance world.
Diaghilev Program
Last fall the Joffrey Ballet called the first three weeks of its New York run "The Robert Joffrey Memorial Season." (On the program cover was a photograph of Joffrey, casually attired, standing in front of a giant American flag.) Included were four performances of the "Diaghilev Program," composed of Michel Fokine's Petrouchka and two Nijinsky ballets--L'Apres-midi d'un faune and Le Sacre du printemps.
It was New York's second chance to see Sacre--that is, the second chance to see this Sacre. A staggering number of dances have been choreographed to Igor Stravinsky's landmark score. (Nijinsky's was, of course, the first.) The Rite of Spring can be the longest thirty-six minutes of one's life, or the shortest, depending on the choreographer. Stravinsky himself (according to Bronislave Nijinska's Early Memoris) preferred the Nijinsky version: "Of all the interpretations of Sacre that I have seen," he said in 1967, "I consider Nijinsky's the best."
He was not alone. Somehow, over the years, from the reading of contemporary reports and subsequent recollections, and from the viewing of photographs and sketches of the 1913 event, a consensus arose: Nijinsky's Sacre was the "it" ballet--the beginning of Modernism, the first modern dance.
Actually, Nijinsky had already broken the rules of ballet in his L'Apres-midid'un faune, and in Sacre he was looking not forward but intently backward, to Slavic mythology. The "rite" of the title is the sacrifice of a maiden to ensure the coming of spring. Indeed, one of the few shocks of the Joffrey production is the opening backdrop. Nicholas Roerich's dazzling primitivist scene looks like a cross between a Tahitian Gauguin and a watercolor illustration for National Geographic: We are in the North, where the sky is a hard blue. It is still cold, but a cataclysmic greening is taking place. Spring--so often depicted as a mild event--is here a
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