Stravinsky is an acquired taste for fledgling classical lovers.

Thanks.

awesome

Stravinsky is the best!

requeue it!!

Man, I remember this from my music appreciation class back in college. I guess my professor did a good job teaching us (or maybe I was the only one who was actually being interested. I felt really awkward because I seemed to be the only one enjoying the class )

Paris was full of art connoisseurs who knew a thing or two of art styles. When This ballet was first shown, the idea of sacrifice and purposely off-beat tempo made everyone angry and they rioted. If you listen closely, none of the sounds are coordinated and they just seem to be everywhere. Even when the music starts with the 'bom bom bom bom bom' in 3:37 it's purposely accented in random timing to break the rhythmic feel, which was the way Stravinsky intended in order to give it a more 'chaotic' feel. Certainly bizzare and Parisians didn't know what to make of this, so they got angry.

Today we can probably categorize his work as 'expressionist' or something. But back then this was a completely different ballfield. Apparently Starvinsky came up with this "sacrificing virginity" idea based on things he observed when he was growing up back in native Russia. Musta been some kind of local tradition. Some rural villages in Japan still does it even to this day I hear.

I guess closest thing we could relate to is like walking into a comedy club in New York and start rapping about child molestation as you're holding up the finger and and repeating the words " *uck the East Coast!!! " Something like that.

By the way, is it just me or doesn't rite of spring remind you of that song from Halo 1 every time you encounter the floods?

Anyone geeky enough to know what I'm talking about here?

http://www.amazon.com/Halo-Original-Soundtrack-Various-Artists/dp/B000067UO7/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/102-0010207-1801742?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1191445068&sr=1-1

Click on 'listen to samples', then go click no.13 - Devils... Monsters...

Some of the story of the choreography can be found by Google. Looks like this performance was in the 2001/2002 time frame and the clip ends before one of the dancers is stripped completely naked.

Quotes from the choreographer, Angelin Preljocaj, from the web site for his ballet company, Ballet Preljocaj.
“ Whenever I listen to Igor Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring" - veritable ground-swell of music of the 20th century - what I feel transpires through this work is as much a matter of fascination as of a feeling of ancestral terror.
This music unceasingly carries along with it a slowly rising force of desire, and at the same time, a kind of controlled panic.
A blend of madness at the thought of perpetrating an act literally dictated by the very molecules of our being and at the same time of jubilation stimulated by our senses ? a leap forward imbued here with the power of an irremediable force.
When faced with this ancestral mechanism, the bodies of the dancers, drunk with exhaustion, have no choice but to participate in this ritual.
Bringing the clan together around an impulse that is, in the end, biological, the Rite of Spring reminds us that as long as men and women continue in their spiritual, cultural or intellectual quest, they will unceasingly and inevitably stumble against this weakness.
As Pascal Quignard says in "sex and fright":
"we carry with us the mental disarray of our own conception.
There is no image that shocks us more than that of reminding us of the gestures of our very inception”

More at http://www.preljocaj.org/

That's got to be *nsfw in *some* workplaces!

This video has been flagged as being Not Suitable For Work - declared nsfw by Deano.

*dance

Adding video to channels (Dance) - requested by paul4dirt.