JOFFREY.JPG
In addition to Nijinsky's original choreography, the Joffrey Ballet's production of "The Rite of Spring" features bright costumes based on those worn by dancers at the work's 1913 premiere.
(Herbert Migdoll)
Don’t be fooled by the company’s name. The centerpiece of the Cleveland Orchestra’s program this weekend is not a ballet in the traditional sense.
Yes, the orchestra is collaborating with Chicago’s Joffrey Ballet, and yes, there will be dancing. But the re-creation of “The Rite of Spring” headed to Blossom Music Center Saturday and Sunday, Aug. 17 and 18, constitutes something else entirely.
Instead of beautiful shapes and flowing lines, the subject will be a pagan sacrifice. And instead of ethereal, gravity-defying maneuvers, look for the brute, rugged gestures conceived by Vaslav Nijinsky.
“This is certainly not what I would call classical ballet,” said Ashley Wheater, the Joffrey’s artistic director. “It really is the antithesis. It’s really a ritual.”
PREVIEW
Cleveland Orchestra and Joffrey Ballet
What: Tito Munoz conducts Stravinsky's "The Rite of Spring."
When: 8 p.m. Saturday and Sunday, Aug. 17 and 18.
Where: Blossom Music Center, 1145 W. Steels Corners Road, Cuyahoga Falls.
Tickets: $22.50-$100. Go to clevelandorchestra.com or call 216-231-1111.
Those who attend this weekend will experience a slice of history. One hundred years after the “Rite’s” notorious premiere in Paris, the Joffrey and the orchestra are restaging the work in a manner faithful to the original.
No fights are apt to break out, as they reportedly did on that day a century ago. Most other elements of the 1913 production, however, will be part of the spectacle, including Nijinsky’s original choreography and costumes designed by archeologist Nicholas Roerich. There also will be a backdrop redolent of the original set.
“This is going to show what the piece was actually written for,” said Tito Munoz, the orchestra’s former assistant conductor and the leader of this weekend’s performances. “It actually gives a lot of insight into the piece.”
Munoz, for one, has been doing his homework. In addition to preparing as he would for any performance, the conductor also has been studying a facsimile of Stravinsky’s original score.
Complete with ideas the composer amended, altered or deleted, the document has proven invaluable in his quest to present the most authentic possible version of the work.
“It’s helping me put the piece into a new context,” said Munoz. “To see the concepts, the creative juices -- what Stravinsky wanted exactly -- it’s providing a lot of insight.”
That the performance involves an orchestra instead of a recording also will draw Blossom patrons significantly closer to the original event.
To understand the impact Stravinsky’s score must have had on listeners in 1913, Munoz said, one must hear the music live. Only then can one understand the Parisian audience’s harsh reaction -- and why the conductor himself, upon hearing the masterpiece for the first time as a youth, regarded it as noise.
“It only answers the question with a live orchestra,” he explained. “When you see it live, when you hear the orchestra making those sounds, it’s always thrilling and breathtaking.
“It heightens your sense of the visuals. It’s such an exhilarating piece. It still can feel very radical.”
Most of the other investigative effort already has been completed. Robert Joffrey, the company’s founder, began work on re-recreating the ballet in 1986 and presented the piece with his company in Los Angeles a year later.
In this, Joffrey and crew had a great deal of help from Millicent Hodson, a self-proclaimed “ballet detective,” who pieced together Nijinsky’s original choreography from primary and secondary sources including interviews with Marie Rambert, Nijinsky’s assistant.
The result, Wheater said, reflects at least 80 percent of Nijinsky’s handiwork and makes clear, from a dance perspective, why the audience in 1913 famously revolted.
The music surely shocked people, but it was the choreography, with its clenched fists, heavy stomps and turned-out legs, so counter to the traditional ballet aesthetic, that most likely roused them from their seats. Even today, while the score has become standard fare for musicians, the choreography has remained difficult for dancers.
“That’s where the outrage came from,” said Wheater, a former dancer who took part in the 1987 production.
On top of this are the costumes: heavy, primitive smocks inspired by Native American garb. Nowadays, just about anything goes on the dance stage, but in Paris at the time, such clothing would have stood out as the polar opposite of frilly tutus.
“He [Joffrey] was very adamant about seeing what all the fuss was about,” Wheater said. “It’s about as close to the original as you can get. It’s a real reflection of the time.”
Even the rest of the program is true, in a way, to the premiere in 1913. Like that groundbreaking presentation at Paris’s Theatre des Champs-Elysees, the concerts Aug. 17 and 18 at Blossom include other dances certain to accentuate the boldness of the “Rite.”
On the first half of the program are three short, distinct works showcasing the contemporary and classical sides of the Joffrey today. On tap are “Interplay,” a setting of Morton Gould’s music by Jerome Robbins; John Adams’ “Son of Chamber Symphony,” choreographed by Stanton Welch; and a pas de deux by Yuri Possokhov set to the Adagio from Khachaturian’s “Spartacus.”
“The juxtaposition was part of the controversy,” Wheater noted. “In that sense, too, people at Blossom will experience a modern-day version of what happened then.”