Nijinsky's Rite of Spring, one of the most notorious ballets in the history of dance, was performed yesterday in London for the first time since 1913.
Last time it ended in catcalls, whistles and jeers. The London audience had heard about the reaction in Paris - where Stravinsky's ferocious score, the folk art-inspired sets and costumes by Nicholas Roerich, and above all Nijinsky's strange angular choreography provoked a riot, with fist fights in the stalls and the police called.
Yesterday morning the Kirov Ballet dress rehearsal ended, as the Chosen One died and was lifted up to the skies by six of her tribe - just a breath after the last throbbing notes from the orchestra - with an impatient cry of: "Too late! Too late!"
The criticism came from Millicent Hodson, a ballet archaeologist who, with her husband Kenneth Archer, has spent the last 10 years recreating every step of the original, in which a young girl is chosen by her peers to dance herself to death, as a sacrifice to ensure the return of the Spring.
They met when she, as a ballet student in America researching Nijinsky's choreography, discovered that there was an art historian in London researching Nicholas Roerich's designs.
They married, and together interviewed surviving cast members of Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, including Dame Marie Rambert who was Nijinsky's assistant. They also tracked down original costumes - the actress Vanessa Redgrave owns one and has been known to wear it to parties - and pored over archives of diaries, notebooks, sketches and photographs.
They made contact with the son of the designer, who lives in India, and with Nijinsky's niece. She was the daughter of his beloved sister, for whom he created the role of the Chosen One but who became pregnant and had to drop out of the production.
While the score became one of the most popular pieces of early 20th century music, and found its way into Walt Disney's Fantasia, the ballet was abandoned after four performances in Paris and three in London. Diaghilev and Nijinsky, who had been lovers, became bitter enemies when Nijinsky married.
The costumes and props were scattered at auction when Diaghilev was bankrupted, while Nijinsky, renowned as one of the most brilliant and beautiful dancers of his generation, suffered a breakdown, and survived for almost 30 years in mental hospitals.
Versions of the ballet were made by choreographers all over the world, including Sir Kenneth Macmillan, whose interpretation was recently revived by the English National Ballet.
However none was ever seen in Russia, where Nijinsky and most of the rest of the Ballets Russes company were remembered as defectors from one of the most famous of all their ballet companies, the Kirov Ballet of St Petersburg.
As she worked on the choreography, Ms Hodson became convinced that what looked so radical and outrageous to the west was intimately bound up in the classical perfection of the Kirov style.
"In many cases the moves in the Rite were mirror images, exact reversals, of movements perfected by the company - where toes are always turned out and the legs extended, Nijinsky turned the toes in and bent the legs. The dancers found the moves extremely difficult and painful, but once they achieved them the effects were extraordinary."
London got its chance to see the results last night, and again tonight. The first Russian performance was earlier this summer, at the Kirov Ballet's home, the Mariinsky Theatre. The only riot was of applause, and the curtain calls lasted 20 minutes.