Performers - Part 80

 RITE by Florence Peake

Igor Stravinsky was a Russian composer.  In his 1913 ballet The Rite of Spring, the plot involves primitive rituals celebrating the advent of spring in which a young girl is chosen as a sacrificial victim and dances herself to death.  The music is very avant-garde compared to classical music by previous composers such as Tchaikovsky.  The premiere performance of the ballet in 1913 caused a near-riot.  There was no nudity involved – it was the music and the choreography (which involved stomping) that the audience objected to.

Above is Igor Stravinsky in 1912.  He sent this photo to French composer Florent Schmitt with the comment "I send you my nude body, which is not to be seen elsewhere."

In 2018, Florence Peake created a "performance work" partly based on The Rite of Spring called RITE, which critics described as "a primal, erotically charged mud fest."  The mud fest was staged in the De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill-on-Sea, England.  Three naked women and two naked men performed on a landscape of wet clay.

First the clothed dancers made things out of the clay.  The dancers became naked and the clay became waterlogged.

The dancers flung clay in fistfuls at the wall while the audience cowered.

It was only during the last ten minutes that a recording of part of the Sacrificial Dance from The Rite of Spring was played.

At the end, Florence Peake (dressed, at center) posed with the performers.  Perhaps it was not a deathless work like The Rite of Spring, which is now considered a masterpiece, but almost anything goes in the name of art.